Nostos
by Parallel Monsoon
Summary: This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with Change. After the bombs fall, The Nostalgia Critic must lead his people on an epic journey in search of a place to call home. *Kickassia as an homage to post-apocalyptic movies*
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: **This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with Change. After the bombs fall, Critic must lead his people on an epic journey in search of a place to call home.  
><strong>CharactersPairings: **Linkara/Spoony, Linkara/Marzgurl, Critic/Chick, Tom/Mickey  
><strong>Rating: <strong>R- descriptions of death, violence, sexual abuse, and angst.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>I own nothing. This work is based on characters played by the great guys at Channel Awesome.  
><strong>Author's Note: <strong>This is a full blown post apocalyptic rewrite of Kickassia (with added superpowers!). Somewhere between an homage and a parody of post-apocalyptic movies, it makes deliberate use of tropes common to the genre. For those interested, a list of tropes and references will be provided at the end.  
><strong>Warning and Triggers: For a homageparody, this is a serious fic. It includes references to mental illness, child abuse, sexual abuse, incest, sexual assault, rape, torture, dub-con situations, good people doing bad things, bad people doing worse things, and issues dealing with gray morality. Please do not read if any of this may trigger you. Warnings include character death, violence, descriptions of gore, and some surprisingly mild sexual content.  
>Personal Disclaimer:<strong>The thoughts and actions of the characters do not reflect the personal feelings or opinions of the author.

* * *

><p>The Nostalgia Critic took first turn with the shovel. The earth here was unforgiving, the dry soil heavy with roots and stones. He felt oily with sweat by the time he handed off to Jew Wario.<p>

Handsome Tom came next. He could have finished the job in minutes, dug down deep and fast without effort. It might have taken Lord Kat longer, but when it was over he wouldn't feel the strain that left Critic shaky and sore.

But participation was part of the ceremony, a way for them all to say goodbye with the labor of their hands. Handsome Tom climbed out and 8 Bit Mickey went in, working in silence broken only by the occasional grunt.

Film Brain was down in the hole when The Cinema Snob announced it had reached six feet. They lowered the casket down with ropes, sharing a wince at the thud when it hit bottom.

Covering it back over was an easier matter. The dirt pattered down, violet-colored worms squirming between the clots.

They didn't bother with a cross. Marking a grave site was never wise.

When the freshly turned soil was level with the surrounding ground they looked to Critic. So expectant, waiting for direction to their grief when all he wanted to do was rage at the sky. It was his friend in that rough-hewn box beneath their feet.

But he had to be strong. Even now. Especially now.

"His name was Ma-Ti," he began, "He was a brave man. He gave his life defending us, but what I remember more than his courage was his heart..."

* * *

><p>The first bomb fell at 3:22 on a Sunday afternoon.<p>

No one knew who started it. An even greater mystery was who finished it, which nation was the last to fall. A lovely spring day turned to ash and fury, the survivors left to scrape and struggle.

It might have been kinder if they'd just used nukes. Most certainly it would have been quicker. But that technology was outdated, overtaken by stranger science. Radiation killed, but what these dirty bombs left behind were the oddly named particles of new physics.

Had the weapon makers known what the results would be? Surely not. Giving power to the enemy seemed a poor strategy for war.

This was how the world ended. Not with a bang, not with a whimper.

With Change.

They could feel it happen, the untwisting and remaking of their DNA. The pain was crippling.

When it faded nothing was the same.

The Nostalgia Chick was the only one among them untouched, though they'd met others who had escaped with their genetics intact. For most their new abilities were more entertaining then practical. Critic had the power to levitate himself; Chris Larios held mastery over radio waves. Cinema Snob found new insight into the hidden patterns all around them, the hard numbers on which life rested.

For some their gift came with a cost. Paw's ability to reproduce any song he'd ever heard had robbed of his true voice. Angry Joe no longer felt pain, but he also felt no pleasure, his skin deadened, his senses dulled. Lord Kat missed sleep and the dreams it brought, lost to him now that his body required no rest.

The lucky few gained defensive capabilities. Jew Wario took on the color and texture of the landscape, blending in until he might as well have been invisible. 8 Bit Mickey could teleport. Film Brain and Marzgurl twisted the minds of the enemy, Marzgurl with projections of fear and Film Brain with an aura of vulnerability that made it impossible to raise a hand against him.

Others rose as weapons. Linkara's prop gun fired bolts of lethal energy. Handsome Tom could crush a man's bones with his hands. Phelous's left arm was now a blade, capable of cutting through the hardest metal.

It made Critic shudder to lead them, these men who could now kill with such ease. He trusted them at his back, but what of the others like them? They stalked the city streets, stealing the supplies and lives of the unwary. At a distance it was impossible to tell if a stranger was friend or foe, and distance was no guarantee that they couldn't cause harm, not with possibilities like laser beam eyes or telekinesis.

But even Phelous with his silvery sword was still who he had been before the Fall. For some Change had been more fundamental. Benzaie seemed content enough in his new polar bear body, but hearing that accented voice from a sharp toothed muzzle still shook Critic.

And then there was Spoony...

Spoony, who never knew who he would be when he woke in the morning, who had already tried twice to kill himself.

He had been a snarky bastard once, Spoony, with a sharp tongue and clever mind. Now he was broken, rarely speaking lest something come out of his mouth he hadn't meant to say.

Take a world tore apart by war. Add superpowers that wouldn't have looked out of a place in a golden age comic book. It was a recipe for slaughter, and Critic was tired of losing friends.

The Angry Video Game Nerd had been the first. Critic could only assume he'd died in the initial barrage, shot down on his way to join them for the filming of the anniversary special.

They'd been down in the hotel's basement laying out marks when the blast wave hit. A bunch of internet reviewers pretending to fame, mugging for each others' cameras. At first it was just noise, a steady growing roar.

Then it was heat, even through the walls. The lights went out, the ground rolled, and the hotel shook itself to pieces. Sage died an inglorious death when a chunk of the ceiling came down on top of him and they hadn't even known, hadn't realized he was missing until That Other Guy remembered his camera had a light and saw the spreading pool of blood.

They'd shared space with the corpse for three days. The twittering of the rats that came to gnaw at it couldn't drown out the screaming from outside, but eventually their supply of chips and sandwiches ran out. It was an insult to emerge from the hotel to find the sun still had the audacity to shine.

A week later Lee was cut down by a sniper. They never saw who did it. Just a random act of violence, here at the end of times.

His death had made them move to higher ground. It was Critic who'd gotten the clever idea to avoid the streets, moving between the crumbling buildings instead when they could. His idea to carry a board to bridge the gap between roofs.

His idea that killed his brother.

The crack of the board snapping had been as loud as the gunshot that murdered Lee. Critic had lunged for That Other Guy, but their combined weight had yanked him from the air. The surprise of falling had loosened his hold, leaving his brother to plummet down while Critic shot up high.

And now Ma-Ti was another name to add to the list, killed because of a stupid mistake. A mistake Critic could have prevented. It was his job to enforce the rules and keep everyone safe, but he'd let them get lax. Complacent.

They'd thought their little kingdom was secure, their bunker with its poured concrete walls and door of steel. Someone had known what was coming and tried to prepare, only to die before reaching their custom made bolt hole. Their loss had become the Channel Awesome team's gain, a lucky find on par with a deux ex machina spaceship in a shitty Final Fantasy sequel.

But even Spoony had been unwilling to question it. They'd just accepted, squeezing the lot of them into a space meant for far fewer. There had been comfort in the closeness, and soon enough that little box started to feel like home.

And that had been the problem. Instead of keeping an eye out for danger they'd spent their days broadcasting through Larios, grabbing at normalcy by continuing their reviews. They'd even convinced themselves they were doing good, comforting those who wandered out in the deserts of Arizona with tales of heroes from distant planets and heroines in spandex.

Critic didn't know how the raiders found them, or why the door had been left open. Things would have been so much worse for them all if Ma-Ti hadn't met them first. He'd burned one, froze another, used wind to sweep a third into the wall hard enough to snap his neck.

The raiders were all dead by the time the rest of them even registered the invasion, but one of them had gotten in close. The fist he drove into Ma-Ti's belly had passed through skin and penetrated deep, leaving behind no visible wound but very real damage.

Ma-Ti didn't die quick or easy. He lingered, coughing blood for days until something inside finally burst and finished it.

There was no one to blame, not when they'd been getting sloppy with security. And Critic couldn't said for sure it would have made a difference if his orders had been followed.

A man who could punch through flesh might also have been able to pass through steel. They were safer than they had been, but they weren't **safe**.

Critic hadn't volunteered to lead them. There had been no vote, no process. It had simply always been the way of things, organizing his ragtag little team of misfits, soothing their wounded egos with one hand and cracking the whip with the other. He'd handpicked each of them to work at Channel Awesome and it seemed natural, even to him, even now, that they should follow his word.

But if he was their leader, then it was on him to find them somewhere better. Somewhere with room enough to train and a way to keep watch.

And they needed weapons. The bigger the better.

A tall order, but one Critic thought he might be able to deliver. He'd heard the first rumor weeks ago and had dismissed it out of hand, but now, alone at Ma-Ti's grave, he knew they had to try.

He wasn't going to bury anymore friends.


	2. Chapter 2

Linkara walked into the bunker's central room and found himself the instant focus of every eye. He faltered, holding up his hands to show his own confusion.

"Critic said to give him a few more minutes," he said, "And no, I don't know what this is about either."

His own eyes sought out Spoony. His friend sat beside Cinema Snob in the center of the group, cross legged on the posh mattress they'd scavenged from a condo. It wasn't like him to be in the middle of things, but he looked calm enough, shoulders slumped instead of rigid.

Linkara let it slide for now, edging his way around the perimeter to a spot by Benzaie. The bear yawned at him, showing off an impressive array of teeth and a curling pink tongue. He rumbled in pleasure when Linkara plopped down at his side and scratched behind his ear.

"Better be good," Lord Kat grumbled, "I can't breath like this."

He heaved a sigh to demonstrate, jostling Film Brain and Phelous on either side. Film Brain let the motion carry, bouncing on his own mattress until Phelous raised his bladed arm in threat.

There was a good reason such group meetings were rare. Of the bunker's three rooms this was by far the largest, a plain box no bigger than a hotel bedroom. They'd thrown out the table and chairs and replaced them with stolen bedding to cushion the hard floor, and at night the tight space was almost soothing, the night sounds of friends close by easing away the strain of the day.

Awake it was a claustrophobic's worst nightmare, sweaty and stifling.

"He probably just wants to go over the work schedule." Linkara dug his fingers in deeper, smirking when Benzaie leaned into the pressure, hind leg jerking like an oversized dog's. He wiggled over to sit in the curve of the bear's body, letting him rest his heavy head on Linkara's knee. "I know we need batteries, right Snob?'

Cinema Snob's head tilted to the side, eyes going distant as he run down his mental inventory. "Batteries, toilet paper...we also need antibiotics. We're running low after..."

He trailed off then, and for a moment no one could seem to look each other in the face. Ma-Ti's death was still a fresh, sharp pain that stung at the most unexpected times. Snob cleared his throat, rolling his shoulders in an apologetic shrug.

"Gauze too," he said, "And pain killers. But Tom and Joe are already scheduled to go scouting tomorrow."

"Yes, batteries." It was Spoony who spoke, but the voice wasn't his, rising too high and cracking in a squeal. "But not those puny things...bring me car batteries, you fools! Do you know what I could do with the acid?"

Linkara was already up and moving when the air around his friend thickened and blurred. For a few seconds he was out of focus, his normal garb of jeans and a t-shirt overlaid by a phantom lab coat.

"Shit..."

The curse came in a muttered chorus from a dozen throats. There was a ripple effect as everyone close to Spoony scooted back, 8 Bit Mickey going so far as to teleport to the opposite side of the room.

Linkara dropped to his knees at the center of the newly cleared space, catching Spoony by the shoulders and shaking him hard enough to jerk his head back.

"Spoony." There was controlled violence in his actions, but his voice was gentle, coaxing, the cajoling tone reserved for small children and pets. "Wake up."

Spoony shuddered once, back arching in a convulsive movement that looked like it hurt. He let Linkara pull him up, manhandle him over to a corner with the stunned docility of a herd animal. Linkara pinned him there, holding him up when he wanted to sag back to the floor.

"Spoony." It was more talisman then name, spoken with slow reverence. Linkara leaned in to touch their foreheads together, trying to force the other man's eyes to focus on his own. "Wake. Up."

Those eyes were flashing, irises spinning through shades of blue in a hypnotic and sickening cycle. They settled finally on cobalt, pupils dilating dark and wide before Spoony blinked and winced from the light.

"With me?" Linkara asked.

Spoony gave the question due consideration before offering a tiny nod. He breathed out a sigh, swaying forward until he could rest his head on Linkara's shoulder.

Somewhere behind them Snob cleared his throat. "That was my fault," he said, "I thought he seemed off."

Linkara ran his hand down Spoony's back, feeling the tremors that shook him, rough little shivers like he'd been left out in the cold. It took a few minutes before Linkara felt the other man take back some of his own weight. His head lifted and he managed another, more confident nod, Linkara's cue to ease away.

"Nah, I should have picked up on it," Linkara said in answer to Snob as he turned to face the room. He wasn't surprised to feel Spoony latch onto the back of his coat, grip urgent and clumsy, and widened his stance to block the other man from view. "He's okay."

The lie was so blatant that speaking it felt like blasphemy. Spoony's mind had already been splintered before he joined Channel Awesome, long before the Fall and Change shattered his always tenuous control.

The technical term was dissociative identity disorder, but Spoony just referred to the alters as '_his little friend_s', always with a smile and a wink, as if his illness was some hilarious joke played out at his expense.

The one Spoony had come to call SWS represented his sexuality. Black Lantern was his anger, The Bum his desire for comfort and a kind hand. They were the parts of himself he'd been denied, back when he was a boy with a mother who loved her cult more than her child.

And then there was Insano, Insano with his white lab coat and screaming laugh. Buried deep within Spoony was a quicksilver intellect, a mind that could have accomplished far more than clever turns of phrase in internet reviews.

Insano was that genius unleashed, brilliant but blind to consequences. It made him more dangerous by far than the others, though the others were dangerous enough. Even more so now, for the Change had found them as well, twisting what was already twisted and turning the alters feral.

All but Insano had found new gifts. When distressed, as he always was, The Bum could conjure trash, food half-eaten and dark with mold and rot. Bits of cardboard, crumbled paper, calling up the flotsam and jettison of the streets outside to clutter the bunker and make them gag from the stench of it.

For all his raging Black Lantern was relatively harmless, but his fangs and claws made getting close to him unwise. SWS's control over lust was a far greater threat, the rush of hot blood rousing them to arguments and other things they would later regret.

But that wasn't what had finally driven Spoony to despair, accomplishing what years of abuse and brainwashing could not. Before the Fall the voices in his head had been his own, an aspect of the self. When he'd been SWS or The Bum there'd been no room for Spoony, and his mind had conjured up a comforting blankness to account for the lost time.

Now his alters were their own, and when they took control Spoony could see through their eyes, see the way Lantern lunged at his friends, the way SWS taunted them with his swagger. Regaining control was a struggle, one that left him drained and shaken.

Things had never been easy for Spoony, but before the Change he'd been functional, even happy, able to go about his day with a smile. They'd done their best by him at Channel Awesome, and the support had probably helped more than his twice weekly therapy sessions and his pills with their polysyllabic names.

Now...

In his bleaker moments Linkara had to wonder if it had been cruel to take away the extension cord the last time Spoony tried to hang himself. Had to wonder if it was for his sake or his friend's that he'd made Spoony promise not to try again.

The room was hushed expect for Paw's soft humming when Critic entered, none of them willing to risk disturbing Spoony while he still struggled to find his balance. Critic stopped in the doorway to take in the scene and tilted his head in silent question.

"He's okay," Linkara said again, "He's him."

The hands tangled in his coat tightened and dragged Linkara back a stumbling step. Reaching back, he delivered an awkward pat to Spoony's shoulder, ignoring the way he flinched at the contact.

Yeah, Spoony was doing just fine.

"I'm sorry to keep you all waiting," Critic said as he took his place at the center of the room, Chick following her usual two steps behind. "I'll try to keep this short, but I do ask that you let me finish before asking questions."

Linkara could tell he wasn't the only one who found the request odd. Critic rarely stood on ceremony, and their meetings had a tendency to dissolve into bitch sessions.

But now he looked serious, deadly so, mouth set in a tired little frown. It made his twin's wide smile look out of place, as if the pair weren't meant for discord.

"I've made a decision," Critic said, "And I don't like it anymore than you will. We need to move on."

Critic's plea for silence was forgotten, consumed by a rising mutter of protest. Linkara barked out his own incredulous laugh. Go? Out into the city, the streets where Lee had been struck down for the fun of it? Leave? Their haven, this room where they slept tumbled together like a litter of puppies, soothed by the tidal sweep of their shared breathing?

Critic held up his hands and waited for the din to die down. "I know, I know. It sounds crazy. But think about it...those raiders weren't hunting us. They got lucky, same as we did. If they can get lucky, so can others. We need a place we can defend better than this."

He looked at them each in turn, and maybe it was meant to be reassuring, a show of strength and resolve. But Linkara could think only of the circles under the man's eyes and the red on his lip where he'd chewed at it until the blood came. He forgotten that Critic had been friends with Ma-Ti since college, forgotten the two of them had built Channel Awesome together.

"We need weapons. Guns, mines, I don't care, whatever we can get our hands on. Whatever will give us an edge."

"I hear you," Linkara said, because it did make sense. The bunker had been built to stand against bombs, not to protect those within from those outside. There was only one door in and out, leaving them vulnerable to a frontal assault. "But like you said, we got lucky. You really think we'll stumble onto something better?"

"I do," Critic said, too calm, too easy, with all the relish of a man who has a plan he believes in. "Molossia. We go to Molossia."


	3. Chapter 3

Molossia.

It was their Monroeville Mall, their Pacific Playland, their 42nd Blockade.

They'd heard the first whisper of it not long after the Fall, whispered by grizzled travelers unaware of Jew Wario's spying presence. An oasis, out there in the barren lands, a place of safety guarded by a dragon at the gate.

They said it was a government laboratory. Perhaps even the very one that sent the signal to launch the first bomb. Buried deep in the Arizona desert, protected by an automated security system and a lone guard who turned a deaf ear to pleas for refuge.

Baugh. The name was said always with contempt mingled with awe. They said that he was old, that he was young, that he laughed when he killed, that he cried. He had murdered his fellow workers, or let them go, or kept them imprisoned to torture at his leisure. It was said that he had the power to kill at a glance, or no power at all save that granted by Molossia's advanced computers.

The only thing that all agreed upon was that within Molossia's walls was food enough to last for decades. A stockpile of weapons worthy of a small nation. Water enough for that most sacred of all things, a hot bath.

It was the last that swayed them, the disbelief on their faces turning to raw longing. Critic pressed his advantage without shame, painting them a picture of leisurely showers, water dripped down in beads, hair free for once of grit and cinders.

"We speak to Baugh," he said when he was finished with temptation, "If he refuses, we take Molossia by force."

"Works for me." Chick bounced on the balls on her feet, chipper as ever, and Critic had to stifle a laugh at the way some of the others rolled their eyes. "Let's get 'em!"

"How are we going to get in?" Lord Kat asked, "Assuming it even exists. We're not soldiers."

"I have no idea," Critic answered honestly, "I won't know until we see exactly what we're up against. But I have faith that we'll find a way if we work together."

He rose up, let his heels lift off the floor and spread wide his arms. "We're better than this," he said, nodding at the gray walls, the way they sat squashed tight. "We could help rebuild, open Molossia up to others. The more people we surround ourselves with, the better off we'll be."

He hung in the air, watching their eyes and waiting for hope to bubble up. He could see how it flowed from one to the next, until they began to think that it just might be possible, this crazy plan that spoke to them of ambition but had its roots in fear.

"People, are you with me?" he asked when the time was right.

Film Brain was the first on his feet, throwing himself at Critic's legs and knocking him back to the floor. He'd hardly found his bearings before Benzaie swept him into a very literal bear hug. Even Spoony raised a fist in triumph, winking at Critic over Linkara's shoulder.

Critic smiled, hugged back those he could reach, did his best to pretend a confidence he did not feel.

"Molossia," he said again, squeezing his sister's hand when she took his own, drawing strength from the fear that boiled up at the thought of her dying as Ma-Ti had died, flushed and moaning, a maimed thing that coughed out spongy bits of lung. "Are you with me?"

They answered him with a roar.

* * *

><p>Excitement gave way quickly to exhaustion. They were always tired these days, fatigued by the sheer monotony of their encapsulated existence.<p>

This would be their last night in the bunker. Linkara watched the others jostle for space, grumbling at each other's misplaced elbows and boney knees.

It bothered him, that Critic seemed set on moving so quickly. At the same time he had to admire him for it, understanding as he did what drove the man. To give them time to think was to give them time to reconsider.

Despite his misgivings, Linkara had no better plan to offer. He believed that Molossia was real, having heard rumors of it from too many to dismiss it out of hand. But Baugh worried him, that enigma that might well strike them down before they got close.

"You're nervous," Spoony said. His voice rasped rough across the words, coarsened by Lantern's growls and Insano's cackles, and he finished, as he almost always did, with a hacking cough that bent him double. Linkara winced and patted down his pockets in search of a lozenge, peeling away its wrapper before handing it over.

"You're not? It won't be easy."

"No," Spoony agreed, biting down on the candy instead of sucking at it. "But fuck man, we can't just **sit** here."

The others were settling now, Joe and Larios filling the room with their snoring. Linkara picked his way through the tangle of bodies, mumbling apologies when his foot caught someone in the side or pinched down on a finger.

Spoony was close behind, and when Linkara opened the door to the little room that had once served as a supply closet he sighed.

"I will miss this," he said, dropping down onto the cot and pulling the pillow onto his lap, stroking it like a favored cat. "Back to sleeping in cuffs for me, I guess."

Linkara hadn't stopped to consider that, what this desert journey would mean for Spoony. At least here in the bunker he had a room to call his own, albeit it a tiny one smaller than a prisoner's cell.

But the important thing was that it had thick walls and a door that locked from the outside. It was Spoony's own little sanctuary, a place he could rest unfettered without the fear that an alter would break free and harm his friends.

"We'll figure something out," Linkara promised, "Get some sleep. I have a feeling Critic will want to leave at dawn."

He shut the door and threw the bolt, curling up on his own pad just outside the makeshift bedroom. It took only a few minutes before Marzgurl joined him in the dark, curling up so close her long hair tickled his neck.

"Is he really okay?" she whispered.

Linakra bit back his first answer. It would have been reflex, nothing more, but he didn't need to lie to her. She'd only punch him if he tried, and she wouldn't pull the blow.

"Earlier…there wasn't any warning," he said, "He was quiet, sure, and he doesn't normally like people to sit so close, but he wasn't shaking or flipping out or anything. I was watching him and I didn't see it coming."

Confessing his sin aloud didn't lessen the guilt. He was settling in to stew in it when Marzgurl flicked his cheek. Hard.

"Stop that," she ordered, "You can't catch everything. If he is getting worse, that's not your fault."

She flicked him twice more, tiny stinging pains that made him squirm. He batted her hand away and flipped over to face her, squinting in the faint glow of the nightlight left on for Jew Wario's sake.

"I'm the one who promised him things would get better."

"I don't think you get to make that promise," Marzgurl said, "Now repeat after me...I am not responsible for my crush being a head case."

Linkara had never been able to out glare her, and this time he didn't bother to try. "I am not responsible for my **best friend **having a **serious medical condition**," he said.

She rewarded him by patting his still burning cheek. "Close enough."

Later he slept, and later still woke to Black Lantern's low snarls and the scrape of claws against the closet door. Marzgurl was warm at his back, breathing easy, and he took comfort from her closeness.

_'I'm not responsible.' _A mantra, one he could almost but not quite believe. _'I'm not responsible...'_

* * *

><p>"That was a right beauty of a speech, hon."<p>

Critic bobbed his head in absent agreement. His focus was on his maps, bright **useless** grids that told him everything but what he needed to know.

No matter how often he checked Molossia refused to appear captioned and marked like the other tourist traps. He'd narrowed down its location to two possibilities, some hundred miles apart and far from even the smaller towns.

_'But choose wisely,'_ he thought, and it chilled him that at first he couldn't remember what movie the quote came from. At least death by grail had been quick, albeit grisly. If he got this one wrong it would condemn them to slow starvation, and in the end there was no such thing as a pretty corpse.

"Maybe we should stay." He turned to face his sister, blushing when she raised a questioning brow. "Just a few weeks. We should build up more supplies."

Her small hand settled on his shoulder, a grounding weight that held him steady when he leaned into it. "Well, I guess that'll be fine," she said, "If you think it's best."

But he thought of Ma-Ti, of the men he had burned, imagined he could smell them still, charred fat and greasy meat.

He planted his left pointer finger on a blotch of green, the right on a crescent of purple.

"Pick one," he told his sister.

"Left," she said, no hesitation, and Critic felt something inside himself settle.

Left it was.

At least simply getting lost wasn't a concern, not with Snob to guide them. Navigation came down to numbers, and given coordinates and a compass he would never wander aimless. It was a handy talent, of more use by far than floating on air.

Chick leaned in to kiss his forehead and he hummed, grateful for his twin's touch. It was their turn in the bunker's lone bedroom, one final night of privacy before they set out on the long journey.

It made him feel slimy and shameful, but given the choice between losing his twin or his brother, he was thankful to have Chick still by his side. Losing That Other Guy had nearly broken him, but if it had been Chick who had fallen he knew he would have followed, would have thrown himself down after her and been content in those fast few seconds before impact.

Now she smirked at him, lips twisting in a way that made him shiver with anticipation.

"I think you need to relax a little," she said.

She held up a dark wooden pipe, wiggled it like a treat before a puppy, and now it was Critic's turn to be tempted.

He fixated on its sleek lines, the curve of its bowl. It would be wrong to indulge. He should be out mingling with the others, reassuring them as best he could that he had some fucking clue what he was doing.

But he needed it so badly. So much in the coming days would depend on his ability to pull them on with words alone. What Chick was offering was the chance to speak without censure, to put aside goodness and decency to dabble in the dark, if only for a little while.

He opened his mouth and let her slide the stem between his lips, tasted the bitterness of flaking vanish and old wood.

"Ask me a question," he said.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a hard thing, leaving Ma-Ti behind.

Critic knelt by the grave, a darker patch of earth in an abandoned lot. Already the weeds were encroaching, thick stemmed and heavy with berries.

They'd met when he was young and stupid, wide-eyed at this wider world that had always been just out of reach after a childhood on the streets. He'd tried so hard to hide his newness, but Ma-Ti must have known, must have sensed the panic that gripped him at the smallest things.

He'd had his fun, teasing Critic when he gawked at hundred dollar textbooks and five hundred dollar calculators. But he'd also helped him chose his courses, kept him in burgers and sodas when his stipend ran low at the end of the month.

Before he'd only known his family, a triad with That Other Guy at its head. Ma-Ti had been his first friend, a person he could lay claim to who wasn't already his by blood.

The idea for Channel Awesome had been Critic's, but it was Ma-Ti who made it real. Within two years of their first official business meeting they had an office, employees, a health plan with optional dental coverage.

Critic took care of the reviewers, treating them like the disobedient but eager to please puppies they were. He popped them on the nose when they deserved it. Praised them when they earned it. Coaxed the shy ones from their corners and kept the rowdy ones from each other's throats.

Ma-Ti...

Critic's name was on the office lease, but it had been Ma-Ti who picked the location. Ma-Ti who bought the desks, set up the computers, and soundproofed the studio. Ma-Ti who gave their card to the other companies in the building with instructions to call if The Bum went wandering.

His job was in the details, all the little things that Critic couldn't be bothered with and Channel Awesome couldn't exist without. And he was brilliant at it, too much so perhaps, efficient in a way that made it easy to forget their travel arrangements didn't make themselves.

But Critic didn't miss the man who bought his plane tickets and drove his rental car.

He missed the man who'd hugged him when he dropped out of college, who'd picked up the phone when Critic called after three years of silence. Who'd been goofy and a little arrogant and intolerant of fools.

He missed his friend.

He wanted to say goodbye, but the words were barbed and heavy in his throat. What came instead was the song they'd sung together after late night study sessions. Sharing a joint, giggling at each other's attempts at falsetto, and Critic would have given anything, maybe even Chick, to have those moments back again.

"Three little merry maids are we..."

* * *

><p>This is Chris Larios with Transmission Awesome. If you're just tuning in, Paw finished up his series on songs for the times with that catchy little ditty by The Postal Service, "We Will Become Silhouettes."<p>

"Check back at noon when Lord Kat and Benzaie will review _Bad Day on the Midway_, a game you probably never heard of but really should have played when you had the chance.

"Don't bother touching that dial, folks. I guarantee we're more entertaining than the static."

* * *

><p>By car the journey to Molossia would have taken less than nine hours.<p>

They'd have grumbled through it too, fussed over fast food choices and bathroom breaks. There were so many things they'd taken for granted then, and easy travel topped the list.

Now the roads that weren't blocked were rubble, the rest stops claimed by gangs of raiders. They would have to take it on foot, trusting in Snob to guide them through the beautiful wasteland of the desert.

They left at dusk instead of dawn, choosing to rest in the high heat of the day and travel by night. The twilight noises of the city dogged their footsteps, sent them scrambling for cover at the crash of debris falling far in the distance.

None of them had forgotten Lee, the way he'd been cut down mid-sentence, dead too quickly for the shock of it to register on his face. The way they'd left him where he fell, too busy running to give their friend the honor of a burial.

Critic pushed them on, coaxing and compelling by turns, desperate to leave the city behind. The barren lands were more welcoming than her alleys, the coyotes that sang in the gulches a lesser threat than their fellow man.

When the sky began to lighten they went to ground in a crumbling Motel 8. They could have spread out, made use of the space, but when Critic pulled only one key card from the rack no one protested.

There would be awkward apologies in the morning, but better to suffer the embarrassment of waking pressed too close than face the nightmare of being alone.

* * *

><p>"That was the Nostalgia Critic's top eleven unnecessary Disney sequels.<p>

"Didn't think a movie about fluffy bunnies could be depressing? Stick around later for your Nostalgia Chick's review of Watership Down to find out just how wrong you are."

* * *

><p>The doors to the Motel 8 could not be locked from the outside.<p>

So it was the cuffs for Spoony, just as he'd feared, and a length of chain to leash him to the bedpost. He offered up his wrists without complaint, pulling against the bindings until he was satisfied with their strength.

That his friend should accept exile to the periphery so easily only made Linkara feel worse. He made himself a nest there in the hall, lay there listening to the rattle as the alters fought the tether, wanting only that Spoony shouldn't be alone.

It was there that SWS's influence found him, an invisible eddy of creeping lust. The ache in his groin was just one more betrayal, not only of Spoony but of Marzgurl.

She took him in hand and smiled at him after, accepting too easily that his desires lay elsewhere. The thing between them was friendship and need, not love, or if it was love it was the cutting kind, a sharp-edged thing that left them both scarred.

None of them slept well that night. They were exhausted, strung out with stress, shaky from the constant assault of adrenaline. But how could they rest when there was a world out there hunting them, when the view from the window looked out over smoking ruins and a woman's corpse?

It was Larios they turned to then. What had begun as a game inside the bunker became essential outside it. Those not on watch sat in a circle and sent their voices into the ether.

Terrible movies. Worse games. They talked themselves as hoarse as Spoony, and somewhere in the midst of it found they remembered how to laugh.

And in the laughter they found peace, enough to close their eyes and put their trust in each other.

All but Critic. He kept his post at the window, did his best not to blink least he miss the moment a shadow revealed itself as threat.

And when the sun set and the shadows blended back into the night, he led his people on.

* * *

><p>"Handsome Tom and 8 Bit Mickey will return tomorrow to finish their exploration of the secrets of the classic game Manic Mansion<p>

"Next up is Marzgurl with _Galaxy Railways_. Yes, you heard right. Trains. In space. Later, Jew Wario will be attempting to explain the plot of _The World Ends With You_, a game that makes remarkably little sense in any language."

* * *

><p>It took four nights to leave the city behind.<p>

Critic led the hushed cheer, but his eyes were on the gaps where casinos once stood. Only the Luxor remained, and without the sparkle of neon lights it looked like what it was, a squat black monument to man's lust for useless things.

The desert swallowed them whole. Against the moonscape of its rocks and sands they felt very small, reduced to animals struggling to survive in a pitiless land.

Lord Kat and Tom served as pack mules, dragging travois of supplies taken from the bunker. Rationing was strict, and the meager meals left them unsatisfied and quick to anger. Critic intervened where he could, ignoring the rumbles of his own empty belly and the dry rasp in his throat.

Often he thought of Ma-Ti, of the way he could summon water to fill the cup of his palm. And it shamed him, that he should remember his friend for his control over elements first and his smile second. The desert demanded much and gave little, and soon he came to look upon the others with a hard eye, seeing only the traits must useful to life in the barren lands.

Once Critic had worn the label of cynic proudly. Now he understood that true cynicism was arranging the marching order so that those most easily spared took up the rear. It was leashing Spoony to a steel pole while he slept, like a dog no one quite trusted not to bite. It was denying extra meals to 8 Bit Mickey when he sickened and watching him grow weaker by the day.

* * *

><p>"….sorry about that, folks. We're experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment. Hopefully The Spoony One will be able to finish his review of <em>Noctropolis <em>tomorrow. Linkara's retrospective on _Cyborg Gerbils _will also be postponed until we get some things straightened out.

"For now, please enjoy Film Brain's analysis of _Gabriel _and _Legion_, two movies that share common themes of angels and sucking ass."

* * *

><p>They saw other wanderers from time to time, but took care to keep their distance. From what Jew Wario could glean with his spying most were lost and desperate, unprepared for the intensity of the desert's blast furnace days and frozen nights.<p>

He begged Critic to spare them water, and Critic had to look away when he refused. How could he give to strangers what he withheld from his own friends? 8 Bit Mickey's lips had begun to crack, the blood a match for the hectic flush at his cheeks. The illness that gripped him might have been a mild thing in another time and place, but Critic could give no more rations to a man who couldn't hold down what he ate.

A week into their journey Jew Wario came back to him in tears, thick sobs that made Critic wince at the waste.

Disguised as cactus and stone, he'd gotten close enough to feel the heat of the family's campfire as they made their plans. Molossia wasn't far, the father had said, in the tone of a man who does not believe his own promises. All they had to do was keeping heading north.

His blubbering made Critic miss the point, and he had to ask Jew Wario to repeat his report twice before the horror of it struck home.

North.

North, when he'd been taking them south. Did that little family know something he did not, or were they also only guessing? The travois was almost empty of supplies now, the space taken up by a feverish 8 Bit Mickey.

There was no turning back.

Critic tried to reassure Jew Wario with gentle words, and when that failed he simply ordered him to keep his silence. When the others asked what the fuss was about, he told them the man had been frightened by a scorpion. Knowing Jew Wario as they did, they believed it, teasing him for his hysterics even as they shook out their sleeping bags.

It was the first time Critic lied to the others.

He knew it wouldn't be the last.

* * *

><p>"Starting in just a few minutes, The Cinema Snob and Phelous will be hosting an in-depth roundtable on <em>Troll 5: Trolls in Space, The Musical."<em>

We'll return tomorrow morning with Angry Joe's look at the life and time of Lord Vane, who fought like a man against impossible odds."

* * *

><p>When the last of the food ran out Benzaie kept them alive by hunting wild peccaries. Change had come to the animals as well, gifting the little wild pigs with longer tusks and armored skin. The meat was tough, carrying a strange metallic aftertaste that matched its coppery smell, and they wiped the grease from their faces with broad smiles.<p>

Seventeen days after they left Las Vegas, they came across a settlement only miles from where Critic thought Molossia might be. It had the look of military housing, small square houses that differed only in color, the whole of it surrounded by a high fence.

They should have approached with caution, taken a day or two to watch from a distance. Instead they stumbled into town like drunkards, not believing it for real until the first of them touching the sun warmed bricks.

Film Brain rode atop Benzaie, who himself shuffled with his nose to the dust. Tom carried Mickey without effort, his spot on the travois now taken up by Paw. Chick and Critic leaned on each other. Linkara and Spoony did the same while Marzgurl followed a step behind, watchful should one or the other fall.

It was lucky for them that the houses were empty, the residents fled, perhaps to Molossia itself. Little of use was left behind, but there was a central well where they could slake their thirst. They drank until they were sick with it, then drank more.

There they rested. There was such relief in simply sitting quiet and still. They found canned peaches in a basement, boxes of rice in a pantry. It was surprisingly how quickly they regained their strength on such a rude diet, and it was a blessing to have salt to hide the gamey taste of peccary meat.

Critic allowed them a week. He needed that time as well, if only to prepare and gather his courage. One day, while the others lay sleeping, he eased himself away from the huddle of bodies and set out to the east.

He was lying to them again, by omission at the very least, but he could not share his plans. They'd only insist on coming along, and better to risk himself than risk them all.

The first time Critic went to Molossia, he went alone.


	5. Chapter 5

The ravine cut a winding course between sandstone walls striped with sepia and rust.

Critic kept the center of the dry stream bed, made skittish by the press of rock on either side. Horned lizards hissed at his approach, lifting into the air on clumsy wings of leather and ridged bone.

Here, with only the desert creatures to bear witness, the panic that had driven Critic began to fade. For the first time since Ma-Ti's death he breathed easy and unclenched his fists.

What happened next would be beyond his control, and that was a wonderful thing.

The ravine widened near its end, opening into a circular depression dappled with morning shadows.

And there it was, just where Critic had hoped it would be.

He had built it up in his mind to a kind of Mecca, a place of glass and steel, standing tall and bright under the glare of the Nevada sun. The reality was less impressive. There was a fence, six foot high and topped with barb wire, and behind it a door set in the canyon wall.

But there were scorch marks on the ravine walls, and suspicious seams in the rock to either side of that steel door. If there were cameras they were well hidden, but Critic felt the tiny hairs on his nape rise and knew he was being watched.

He lifted off the cracked earth, gritting his teeth at the focus it took to rise to the height of the fence.

"I know you can hear me," he said, tone light, almost pleasant. "Come out, or I'm coming over."

The monitor was set flush with the stone surrounding it, and the rimshot of static when it turned on made Critic curse and flail, stripping him of the dignity he'd hoped to convey.

The man on the screen was older, balding and going doughy about the face, but his eyes were a soldier's eyes, the thousand yard stare of a war veteran. He wore a military uniform, decorated with stars and insignia that no longer held meaning.

"Hello."

Critic flushed at his own banal greeting, but what else was there to say? Baugh tilted his head in a nod, and for a moment the sheer normality of it made Critic smile. They could have been two men meeting to discuss a business proposal, taking each other's measure by the strength of a handshake.

Baugh didn't seem inclined to speak, but Critic had practiced his own speech, rehearsed it aloud for the little desert lizards.

"I'll cut to the chase," he said, "My friends and I need a place to stay. From what I've heard, you have more supplies and space than you can use. Let us join you."

Baugh stayed silent, and that was answer enough. Critic nodded as if he had been refused, wishing he could claim surprise.

"My people are strong," he warned, "You can't hope to beat us alone. Do us both a favor. Stand down."

Rock grated against rock, a shivery noise that made Critic curl his lip. The panels beside the door slide back and the turrets spin, muzzles sweeping the air until they zeroed in on the enemy.

Critic looked down at the red laser dot centered over his heart. His audience was at an end, but he'd already learned everything he needed to know. He dropped, landing in a crouch with an impact that made his bones shudder.

"Two days. Leave, or we'll remove you."

Baugh's face showed no anger at the threat. There was something very like pity in his eyes, and Critic bristled at it. He wanted no sympathy from this man, needed to see him as a monster, not a fellow survivor defending his home.

"My friends...if they die, it's because I fucked it all up. I don't want to hurt you, but please...just go away. Don't be here when I come back."

"You know I can't do that." Baugh spoke gently, and that more than anything made Critic bow low his head in shame. "I'm sorry, son."

The salute he gave was brisk and precise, a practiced snap of the wrist. Critic did his best to return it, knowing he came off clumsy and ridiculous, a boy playing at being a man.

"Me too, sir," he said, "Me too."

* * *

><p>He heard the shouting before the settlement came into view.<p>

Chick's voice rose above the rest, threatening dire consequences for the crime of losing her twin. Critic ground to a halt, hesitating between quickening his pace and running in the opposite direction. When she learned what he had done the consequences would be his alone to bear, and his sister had ways of making her anger known.

He felt his own rage bubble over when his approach went unnoticed. They were too busy arguing to keep a proper look out, and Ma-Ti had given his life to teach them better than that.

"Why the fuck isn't anyone on watch?"

They turned at his shout, and then 8 Bit Mickey was at his side, shoving him down and kneeling on his spine. Cold steel touched his throat and drew a bead of blood.

"Okay, that was kind of impressive," Critic said, and spat dust. "Unless I had, you know, a **gun**, and just shoot your fool heads off."

The weight atop him disappeared as Mickey stood and stumbled back, pulling Phelous with him. "Critic?"

"Yeah." Critic pushed himself up on elbows and knees, then lurched to his feet and higher. "The tie didn't give it away?"

Chick and Film Brain fell into a vicious shoving content for the privilege of being the first to hug him. Chick won, throwing her arms around his waist, but when the embrace ended she gave a little jump to better slap him across the face.

"Explain," she ordered, so he did, describing what he had learned of Molossia and its guardian.

"I'm sorry," he said when he was done, "But I had to do it alone, and you wouldn't have let me. At least now we know the stories about Baugh making people drop dead aren't true."

"And you decided to test that by getting up in his face." Lord Kat spoke in a slow drawl, drawing out the words to make it clear what he thought of that particular plan.

"I figured it wasn't all that likely," Critic said with a little shrug, "If he had that kind of power, we would have never have heard about Molossia. If people are talking about it, it means they've been there and walked away."

"You didn't prove he can't kill," Snob said, "Maybe he just decided not to."

"True. But if he doesn't even have a power, he could have just used the security system to take me out. The fact that he didn't means Baugh doesn't **want** to kill. That's a weakness, one we can exploit."

With Chick tucked against his hip and his people gathered close, waiting to hear how he meant to carry the day, Critic felt sick dread return, a rat gnawing at the raw walls of his belly. But the joy that lit when their faces when they recognized him had been unfeigned, the slap that warmed his cheek also warming his heart.

If Baugh wanted a fight, Critic was going to give him one.

"Listen up," he said, sinking down enough so he could rest his hand on Film Brain's shoulder, smiling down when the boy smiled up. "We've got two days to get a strategy together. I'm going to ask some of you to do things you haven't tried before. Don't refuse just because you think you can't. We've gotten better at controlling our powers, but I don't think we've found our limits yet."

* * *

><p>There were no broadcasts that day. Critic kept them busy through the night with drills and sparring sessions, and by the time dawn came they were too exhausted for weighty speeches.<p>

He sent them off to bed sore but satisfied with the things they had accomplished. Spoony made no secret of his envy as he watched them congratulate each other.

Critic had promised him an important role in the battle, but Spoony was crazy, not stupid. He was a glorified meat shield, nothing more. Officially he was meant to watch Linkara's back, but if his friend did become a target the only way he had to interfere was by taking the bullet.

Still, at least such a death would hold meaning, and he supposed they would remember him better for it. It wouldn't even count as breaking his promise, not if someone else pulled the trigger.

"What are you thinking about?" Linkara asked, "You've been awfully quiet."

"Quieter than normal," he amended when Spoony rolled his eyes, "Are you worried about the fight? No one would think less of you if you sat it out."

"**No**." It came out harsher than he meant it and made him cough, but there was no way in hell Spoony was going to stay behind while his friends risked their lives. Again, crazy, not **useless**. "I was thinking I can't wait to see Baugh's face when we storm the castle. Critic's plan seems solid enough."

He accepted the half-melted butterscotch Linkara held out to him, rolling it on his tongue and doing his best to ignore its too thick taste. The candies never did much to ease the persistent burn at the back of his throat, but offering them seemed to make Linkara feel better.

"Me too, I guess," Linkara said, but he was staring again. Spoony resisted the urge to strike a pose, well-used to such open study.

He was never quite sure what Linkara was looking for at such times. Some sign that he was on the verge of cracking, but what? It made him nervous of how wide he smiled, the way he held his arms, the hunch of his shoulders.

He must have passed inspection because Linkara sighed and shuffled back on the bed to lean against the wall. Spoony copied him, smiling at the way the mattress gave under his weight. The bedroom window meant he would still spend the night in chains, but that was a small price to pay for memory foam and clean sheets.

"Critic was right about my gun, at least," Linkara said, "It seems kind of silly that I never tried going without it before."

"You're getting better with your aim too. You almost hit the target that one time."

Linkara rewarded his teasing with a thump to the shoulder, and oh, it was **on**.

He could tell the other man was holding back while they wrestled, being ever-so-fucking careful, but for a moment it was almost like the old days. Before the Change rattled his cage, back when they'd been easy with each other and Linkara had looked at him with no trace of fear.

He pulled back when his friend grimaced, but Linkara waved off his apology. "Not you. Think I overdid it today."

The hand he held up was curled into a claw, knuckles swollen and red with heat. Spoony hissed in sympathy at the cuts that marked his friend's fingertips, bloodless and gaping wide to show the pink meat within.

He took Linkara's wrist in his both hands, dug in with his thumbs until the other man sagged against him with a groan.

That throaty little flutter of relief shot straight to Spoony's groin. He pushed back and fell from the bed, teeth clinking shut on the inside of his cheek.

And the faint taste of copper was good, but not enough, not nearly enough. The whispering was growing louder, a rising wash of tonal noise that scattered his thoughts. He bit down harder, worked the flesh until it ruptured, trying to convince himself of his own reality through the lancing pain.

Somewhere far away Linkara was asking questions, but another voice spoke louder. It promised things, terrible things, described with relish the games it would play with the man who patted Spoony's shoulders with such care. The handcuffs would find a new use and the key would be lost. There would be a gag, not solid to muffle the screams but with a hole at the middle to keep the mouth open wide, slick and wet and **ready**...

Spoony was only vaguely aware that he was vomiting, drooling blood and sweet peach syrup. It stung, but the dry heaves were worse, bending him low and leaving him gasping.

"Spoony!"

Spoony. His name. **Him**.

He struck out, pushing SWS back with a strength born of fury. But the anger was itself a lure, rousing Black Lantern and setting him to snarling. The Bum's pleas ran counterpoint, the high pitched prayers for peace of a drunken hippy.

And Insano.

Laughing.

Always. Fucking. Laughing.

"Spoony. That's enough. Wake up now."

But it wasn't going to be that easy this time. The voices were too close, too **real**, and so Spoony did the only thing he could. He pulled The Bum close, pushed him up and **out**, because anything was better than unleashing SWS on Linkara.

_'Shut up,'_ he told the slimy bastard while The Bum whined to be held, _'He's not yours.'_

Because Linkara was his. Maybe not in all the ways Spoony wished he could be, but still **his**. He would kill himself, oath be damned, before he let SWS twist their friendship, warp it with the slavering lust that was all he knew of desire.

But it was shameful, the way The Bum huddled close when Linkara opened his arms, a different kind of violation. Spoony could feel his friend's warmth through The Bum's skin, and it was good, so good he didn't bother putting up a fight.

He didn't need to. Already The Bum was fading back so that Spoony could rise, the whispers dying to their usual distant babble. A hug and the alter was satisfied, and why couldn't the rest of them be so innocent in their cravings?

Spoony didn't so much open his eyes as reclaim them. "Here." It came out as a croak, and he spat red before trying again. "I'm here."

He hated the disorientation, how he'd gone from sitting on the bed to kneeling in a puddle of his own sick, Linkara's face only inches from his own. He pulled away and mourned it when his friend let him, but those were the rules.

Hugs were something The Bum needed, but Spoony was meant to be stronger than that.

Linkara let him rest there long enough for the damp soaking through his jeans to lose its unpleasant warmth.

"Okay," Spoony rasped when he thought he could stand, but he still needed to lean on his friend.

So he let himself lean, because there were weaknesses that were acceptable and ones that weren't, and needing a little help wasn't the same as being a **child**, a mewing wretched child who wanted a **cuddle**.

He let himself be guided to a bedroom that didn't stink of bile. Drank water when it was given, changed his clothes when Linkara turned his back, wiped the blood from his chin when handed a towel.

Linkara whispered an apology when the cuffs snapped shut, but Spoony smiled to show he didn't care. The pillow was soft under his head, and his friend was there to pull the blankets up to his shoulders. It was the best things got, and he was smart enough to be grateful.

But Linkara was staring again instead of going off to his own room like he was meant to, and Spoony allowed himself a moment of irritation.

"What?"

"What was the trigger?" Linkara asked.

Spoony looked at his wrists, at the raw spots that never quite healed where metal had abraded skin. The alters were the ones who fought the chains, but the wounds were his to bear, the wounds and the scars the only thing he could say he owned.

And he looked at his hands, the hands SWS meant to use to carry out his promises, and it was all he could do not to vomit again.

"I have no idea," he lied.

* * *

><p>Critic granted them only a few precious hours of slumber. They moaned and whined when he roused them from their beds, but the compliments were all in play, a way to hide their growing fear.<p>

He ran them through their paces, took all they could give and pushed for more. "It'll do," he said at last, and sat, as sweat soaked and weak kneed as any of them.

"Remember there's no shame in staying here," he told them, "But tell me now. Once we set out, there's no turning back. This will only work if we stay a team."

Some looked away, but it didn't surprise Critic that none raised their hand. They were just internet reviewers for fuck's sake, out of shape and overweight, utterly unprepared for what they faced, but they were brave people. Good people, and he was proud to call them friends.

He sent them off to rest, and it didn't surprise him either when Snob lingered. "Why?" he asked, and Critic sighed, wishing for perhaps a little less bravery and a little more common sense.

"I've answered that already," he said. Several times, and he was too tired for patience. "You're too valuable to risk."

While Critic had offered them all the chance to sit on the sidelines, to some no choice had been given. Larios and Paw had skills ill-suited to combat, and Chick's lack of power left her vulnerable. Film Brain might have been of use, but he was still a boy, far from his family and his home, and Critic owed him better than the battlefield.

"Bullshit." Snob crossed his arms over his chest and spread his legs, taking a stand against Critic's attempts to keep him **alive**, the ungrateful little snot. "I'm too valuable to leave behind. I might be able to overwrite the security system."

"No," Critic said and left it at that, even when Snob scowled and flounced off to complain to the others. Because he couldn't say the rest of it, how Ma-Ti's death had left him with a hole at his back. How Snob had begun to fill that empty space through the long nights of their travels, while they walked with their heads bent close, arguing over east and west and where water might be found.

So Snob would stay back, stay **safe, **because there was a limit to how much Critic could stand to risk.


	6. Chapter 6

The ravine was too narrow to walk abreast. They wove their between the rocks single file, close enough for the one ahead to feel the warm breath of the one that followed on their nape.

Critic stepped to the side when he reached the clearing, touching his warriors on the shoulder as they emerged into the open space. It was a small thing, that contact, but he saw the way it steadied them, let them stand a little taller.

He forgot himself and did the same to Spoony. The man flinched back, a violent cringing that sent him stumbling into Linkara, and Critic muttered an apology that went unheard. He held his breath until Spoony calmed and straightened, shooing Linkara off when he wanted to hover.

Bringing Spoony had been very much a gamble, and Critic still could not guess what would come of it. Unleashing Black Lantern on Baugh could be the distraction they needed to secure the enemy. Even Insano could be helpful if he took an interest in the security system.

On the other hand, Insano in control of the turrets was just about the worst thing Critic could imagine. Even beyond the consequences to the rest, there was a real chance that such a thing would shatter Spoony behind repair. His worst fear had always been hurting a friend, and Critic was repaying that loyalty by putting the man in a position to lose control.

But he had more faith in Spoony than Spoony had in himself, perhaps more faith than Linkara. In those first few days after the Fall, before they understood that more than the world had changed, there had been ample opportunity for the alters to wreak havoc.

There had been some decidedly uncomfortable moments with SWS, and Joe earned a bruise when he growled back at Lantern, but that was it. Whatever else they had become, the alters were still pieces of Spoony. He might wail and gnash his teeth, but Critic trusted him not to hurt his family.

He caught Linkara's eye now, waited for him to give the signal that all was well. It was slow to come, but when Spoony flipped them both off he threw up his hands and nodded.

Critic walked to the fence.

He didn't jump this time when the monitor came to life. Baugh regarded them with insulting calm, a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. He raised his hand in a salute, and Critic tossed back one of his own, crisp and sharp after hours of practice.

Critic motioned over his shoulder for Phelous to come forward. With three easy swipes of his bladed arm he opened a hole in the fence wide enough for a man to pass through, the freed section falling with a clatter.

By now the shields in front of the turrets were grinding down. Baugh could have strafed them were they stood, cut them down and left them for the vultures circling above.

But he waited, as Critic had known he would. Waited for them to admit defeat, tuck up their tails and slink away to a slower death.

"Now," Critic said.

He turned in time to see 8 Bit Mickey's hand land on Lord Kat's arm. There was a sucking sound as air rushed in to fill the space where the pair had been, and then they were standing beside the left turret.

The sensor that topped it was round and black, stupidly obvious. Lord Kat slapped his hand over it, and as easily as that took the gun out of play.

What should have happened next was more of the same. Mickey was meant to return for Angry Joe, meant to teleport him to the other turret.

Instead he staggered and went down hard, crashing to his knees as Lord Kat's feet.

_Fuck, _Critic thought, _'Oh, we are so __**fucked**__.' _

It was asinine but accurate. Mickey had gone as many as three people in a row just a day ago, but he'd yet to recover from the illness that had so very nearly killed him during their journey. Critic shouldn't have pushed him so hard, should have told him to save his strength for when it counted...

It was amazing, how quickly it all went pear-shaped.

_'Fucking fuck __**fuck**__.'_

Critic scrambled back, pulling Phelous with him, trying to get them both out of range when he wasn't even sure how far the turret guns could shoot. Some of them resisted when he tried to strong arm them toward the ravine entrance, but he dug in his heels and shoved harder.

"Go," he hissed, "Lord Kat and Mickey can take care of themselves."

They were going to have to. Critic couldn't see a way to save them without getting them all killed, and they'd gone over this, promised no foolish sacrifices that amounted to nothing in the end. The rule was any man could be left behind if it meant saving the rest, and Critic was going to hold them to it.

He would have sent in Jew Wario, but he'd already determined the sensors tracked heat, not movement. How else could they have found him when he first confronted Baugh, when he'd hung still and steady in the air?

"Go," he said again, because the only one moving was Linkara, and only to put himself in front of Spoony.

Then Joe was jerking into motion, but he was running in the wrong direction. Critic lunged for him and missed, and why oh why had he worried about Spoony when Joe had always been the impulsive one?

Joe was halfway to the turret when it discharged with a noise more like a hum than a bang. The bullet took him high in the right shoulder, spun him round and threw him to the ground.

But he was up and running against just as quickly as he'd gone down, and Critic couldn't watch this, had thought he could if it came to it but couldn't, just as he couldn't look away. Joe was going to die today, and it was Critic's fault because he'd thought himself clever and proved himself a fool.

The second bullet tore a chunk from Joe's arm. The third flayed the skin from his cheek. His blood rained down to darken the desert earth, too bright against the dust, red on red in a lacework pattern.

And then he was in the enclosure with the gun. He ripped it from its mount with his bare hands, gashing open his palms with a howl not of pain but of victory.

Critic didn't remember taking the first step, but once he started to move there was no stopping. Joe held the hunk of metal and plastic out to him like an offering when he reached him, and Critic batted it away so he could stuff his tie into the gaping hole in the man's shoulder.

"Fuck." He'd said that word so often as a reviewer, but never had it been so heartfelt. "Fucking **moron**, Joe!"

"Oh, right," Joe said, "You wanted to save it, right? Man, I'm sorry."

"I'm a little more concerned that you're going to bled out. Here, put pressure on this. Harder!"

Critic left Joe holding his own shirt to his wound and ran to Tom. "Get the door open. We need to get inside, get a first aid kit or something..."

He'd forgotten utterly about Baugh, but the door slide open before Tom could reach it. It shut just as quickly behind the man, and Critic felt a bolt of fear at that. Baugh had to have balls of steel to cut off his own retreat.

Or maybe he knew he had nothing to worry about.

Baugh was shorter than Critic had expected, but his presence made up for his stature. Critic couldn't help the way his knees locked, couldn't stop himself from pulling his hands behind his back so he stood at attention before this man, this soldier.

The man carried a small gray case, and when he tossed it toward Critic he shied back, expecting an explosive, some high-tech weapon emblazoned with a bloody cross.

The box popped open when it hit the ground. Cylinders of gauze spilled out, unwinding as they rolled across the rocky ground. Critic bent to gather them, passed them and the case off to Joe.

"Thank you," he told Baugh, "Now, please. Stand down before someone else gets hurt."

It was meant to be an order, but his voice was too shaky and it came over as a plea. But Baugh raised his hands, and for a blissful instant Critic took it as surrender.

Heat boiled out of the man's palms. No fire, just blistering heat, passing by to either side of Critic and crisping the tiny hairs on his arms.

Well. That answered the question of whether or not Baugh had power.

"Linkara," Critic said, and from the corner of his eyes saw the man move up, flanked by Marzgurl and Spoony. He cocked the gun he held, though it was clearly a toy, a replica of a weapon from wars long past.

"Fry me," Critic told Baugh, "And he kills you."

Linkara fired a green blast to demonstrate. It punched a fist sized dent in the rock above the door, but Baugh didn't flinch when the rubble bounced off his shoulders.

It was a standoff. Not just because of their gifts, but because none of them really wanted to hurt the other. Baugh's lips were turning up at the corners, the same not-quite smile he had worn on the monitor.

Critic was glad someone could see the humor in the situation.

"Please," he said again to Baugh, but at the same time he was lifting a finger in signal to Marzgurl. "You don't want to fight us."

He hoped the man didn't see the way Marzgurl stiffened, the way her eyes went hazy and distant as she rummaged through his mind.

She was looking for his fears, the things that kept him up at night while the world lay sleeping. All men had their weaknesses, and when Marzgurl found Baugh's she would recreate it as a vivid hallucination. If they were lucky it would leave him quaking, but Baugh was made of sturdier stuff than the raiders they had faced in the past.

He struck Critic as the type to fight his nightmares, and if that happened they would be down to one option.

"I don't get it," he said while he waited for Marzgurl to find what she sought, "You seem like a reasonable guy. Why not share?"

Baugh looked to where Tom tended to Joe, and again he smiled. "You've gotten further than anyone else," he said, "That's admirable."

"I'll beg if you want," Critic said, and he would have, would have gotten down on his knees and kissed Baugh's boots if that was what it took to earn them sanctuary.

But he knew they'd already earned it, could see it on Baugh's face, an almost parental pride that softened the man's hard edges. Critic felt the hard knot of his stomach unclench, but the relief only left him nauseous and unsteady.

Then Jew Wario fell.

Dropped in a dead faint, and lost control over his cloaking ability when he did. Between blinks the air behind Baugh went from empty to filled with Benzaie's hulking form.

Baugh must have caught the blur of white from the corner of his eye. He started to turn, and how it must have looked to him, an ambush set up by cowards. Which was exactly what it was, but Critic had hoped not to need it. Benzaie still had trouble gauging his own strength, and a blow from his paw was as likely to take Baugh's head from his shoulders as knock him unconscious.

But Benzaie rose up on his hind legs and raised that paw high, because Baugh wasn't going to give them time to explain. His claws were black sickles gleaming in the sunlight, but the bear was cringing even before he swung, terrified of his own power.

"No, wait! He has…"

Marzgurl's plea was meant for Benzaie, but it was her outstretched hand that Baugh reacted to. In this new age where a man could walk without a gun and still kill at a distance, was it any wonder that he took it for a threat?

So he did what any good soldier would do when under attack. He fired back.


	7. Chapter 7

Linkara could smell her cooking, sweet and smoky, no different than a peccary roasted over a campfire. They screamed together, struggled together, Marzgurl against the agony of it, Linkara against the hands holding him back.

Her skin blackened and split, and what lay beneath was slick red muscle. It was wrong, just wrong, to see that inner meat, to have laid bare what should be hidden.

It took a long time for her screaming to stop, and even when it did Linkara kept going. She was on the ground now, but what was left wasn't anyone he knew. It was a blessing when it stopped, the thrashing and the screaming both, when the char-grilled **thing** lay still.

Linkara drove an elbow back in Spoony's stomach. His grip loosened, enough for Linkara to turn and slam his fist into the other man's face.

Then he was free and facing Baugh. He could see the horror at what he had done in the man's eyes, wet now with the start of tears, but Marzgurl's eyes had **boiled**, had run down her cheeks and dripped from her chin.

There was no kickback when the gun fired, but Linkara wished there had been, wished he could have felt it.

Benzaie scrambled away when the top of Baugh's skull exploded, but he couldn't avoid the splatter. The white backdrop of his pelt made the blood seem brighter, obscenely crimson and horrifically beautiful for it.

The gun slide through his fingers, and Linkara let it fall, knowing already he would never touch it again.

When they'd dug themselves free of the hotel and stood together on an empty street, Linkara had thought he understood what loneliness meant. He knew now that he'd been wrong, that loneliness was your friend dead at your feet, her hand still extended and touching the arm of a murdered man.

He pulled his coat from his pack and would have used it to cover her, but the sun was hot and he wanted her to be cool, wanted her to stop **sizzling, **damn her. Wanted her to stand and narrow her eyes, the way she always did when he'd said something foolish.

He didn't register the fingers plucking at his shoulder until he'd already batted them away twice. He rounded with a snarl, throwing his useless coat in the Bum's face.

"What?"

The alter scuttled back and took the coat with him, clutching it to his chest like something far more precious. There was the start of a nasty bruise on his check, a purple swelling dark against the flaking sunburn.

"Owie." It was a whisper, but The Bum's voice was high and nasal, bordering on a squeal. Gum wrappers gathered at his feet as he edged back closer to Linkara, their tinfoil sides glinting in the sun.

"Owie," he said again, and turned his head to better display his bruise. "Owie on my cheekie…"

His grimy hand found Linkara's shoulder again, and he couldn't take it, couldn't gather him close like he was meant to, couldn't even stand to **look** at him. There wasn't room in him for anything more than Marzgurl and her still smoldering hair, that one point of vanity she'd allowed herself.

But that hand wouldn't leave him alone, pulling at him, demanding attention that he didn't have it in him to give.

"Owie, Linkara, owie..."

Linkara punched him again. A wild frustrated flailing with little force behind it, but The Bum threw himself prone when knuckles brushed his cheek. He cowered there in the dust at Linkara's feet, and even then, even then he was reaching out, pulling at Linkara's jeans, scrabbling to get a grip on him.

"I can't..."

The Bum's eyes were paler than Spoony's, a washed out cerulean, but the shock in them, the hurt, went down deep. Went down to the core. It was the confusion of a little boy, a boy whose mother loved him enough to kiss him while she lashed him tight to the altar.

"I can't deal with this right now."

And Linkara turned his back on The Bum (on Spoony, but he couldn't let himself think that, know that, not while he could still smell her **burning**) and walked away.

* * *

><p>Baugh's fears were for his family.<p>

That was what Marzgurl had been trying to tell them. They were there in his head, his wife and daughters. The smallest young enough to wear a plastic tiara without irony, the oldest in a crop top and eye shadow to please the boys she would never have the chance to meet. The two in-between invisible, like all middle children, mild mannered even in their weeping.

And she hadn't wanted to see him hurt for trying to protect them, had tried to stop a tragedy only to bring one on herself. This, the woman who mocked Spoony for his fears, who rolled her eyes at Jew Wario's hysterics.

She met them at the door, Baugh's wife, gun in hand. It was luck that saved Critic, the weightlessness of levitation making it easier for Lord Kat to haul him out of the way. Disarmed she wielded her words as a weapon, cursing them for murderers and thieves, flaying them open with the truth.

Later she told them of her husband, how he'd courted her with roses and war movies. How he called her Susie, but wrinkled his nose when she called him Kevie in return.

And Linkara stood with his head bowed and took it, these wounding memories that bloodied his soul. And he did not speak of Marzgurl, of the smirk in her smile, the tilt of her head when she laughed. Of how they had touched but never kissed, because kissing was what lovers do, and that wasn't what they were for each other.

Susie spared them nothing, and every word lodged like a knife in Linkara's heart. How Baugh had somehow known of what was to come, had begged for sanctuary for his family and been denied. How he'd brought them to this empty place and refused to tell them where his fellow guards had gone, the only hint the smear of blood on his lapel that Susie had pretended to ignore.

The bombs had fallen only days after, and the woman and her daughters had stayed inside while Baugh went out and stood under the boiling sky. Fate was kind enough to gift him with a power he could use, and use it he did when he had need.

They'd tried early on to do the right thing, still caught up in the storybook morals of yesterday. The woman had reminded them of their own daughters, and when she slumped against the fence there had been no discussion, no question of what to do. Baugh had carried her inside cradled in his arms, and Susie held the water to her lips until she was strong enough to do it on her own.

But she never returned the trust they granted so freely, never believed their compassion would continue. Weeks of stomachaches and rashes, and still Susie drank the tea their guest brewed, not even thinking it might be dosed with poison until she caught the woman in the act.

Molossia's doors stayed closed after that. Those who refused to turn back were met by the turrets, and Susie had taken her own turn at the controls.

Marzgurl was only the last of many of die at this family's hands, but Linkara knew their crimes were not equal. He had raised his gun not in defense but for vengeance's sake, and he could not pretend that motive did not matter.

Susie let them dig the grave, but she filled it over herself, her children adding their own sweepings of dirt and grief. And then she readied her daughters to leave, though Critic begged her to stay, gave his promises that no further harm would come to her and hers.

But they had shown her what they were capable of, these men who put her husband in the ground, and the dangers of the desert seemed lesser for being unknown. They watched her lead them off as dusk fell over the canyon, the child she carried on her hip turning her shadow into something strange and unwieldy.

None of them had power, locked away under the earth as they'd been where Change could not visit them. Worse, they had no experience, and the desert would not wait for them to learn.

And so Linkara found himself a killer not of one but of six.

He sat in the littlest girl room's, on her frilly pink bed, and held her forgotten teddy bear in his hands. The toy smiled up at him, squeezed lumpy and threadbare, loved too well for gentle hands.

He stared into those scuffed, friendly eyes until the bed dipped under another's weight. He'd asked the others to leave him be, but it was no great surprise that Spoony hadn't listened.

Linkara waved him off, but there was no anger left in him, and barely any sadness. He felt simply cold, taken by a chill he could not shake.

Spoony too was trembling. Subduing his alters on his own led to something that was more seizure than transformation, and it would be hours yet before his muscles calmed. The bruise was a hard swelling over his cheekbone, darker now than before and topped by a scabbing cut.

Linkara winced at the sight of it, feeling the throb as if he were the one bloodied and bruised. He wanted to apology, but his tongue too felt frozen, a dead numb thing that kept him from swallowing.

"Shut up," Spoony said anyway, "Just shut up, okay?"

He swept Linkara into an embrace. Held fast when he struggled but not tight, giving Linkara room to remember how to breathe.

When the tears came it felt more like vomiting then weeping, grief and pain and shame pouring out in great heaving sobs that left him aching to his core. But he felt no better after, as one sometimes does after sickness passes, only sticky and in desperate need of a tissue.

He wept for Baugh and Marzgurl, but also for himself. For the man he had been yesterday and would never be again, the man he'd buried beside their graves.

Through it all Spoony hushed him, pressed kisses to his temple and rocked him like a child. But he offered no platitudes, gave no excuses for the sins Linkara had committed, and that was the greatest comfort of all.

He had murdered a man and struck a friend, but he was still loved. It was more than he deserved, and the only thing he needed.


	8. Chapter 8

Molossia was a spider web, a sprawling place of tunnels and doors. More were locked than open, but they worried little about what lay beyond those sealed passages. It was all they could do to wrap their minds around the flushable toilets, the systems room with its beeping, blinking machines.

So many wonders, and they discovered them together, crowding into doorframes and peering over shoulders. They'd been so long in each other's space that given room to breathe they only drew in closer, made skittish by the echo of their own footfalls.

Everywhere lay artifacts. Shaving cream in the bathroom, a Lego block forgotten in a corner, salt ready on a table. They walked with care in this museum to Baugh and his family, all too aware of the taint that followed them, the desert dust staining Molossia's white tiles.

Linkara chased it with mop and rag, sprayed and wiped and sprayed again. And yet he could still see it, the blood speckling pale fur, a memory he could not erase as easily as the smears on Molossia's walls.

Benzaie carried not the sight of it but the feel, the way it had dried tacky and flaking. He washed as often as Critic would allow and still his skin rippled and twitched, the loose hide rolling across his shoulders. He chewed himself raw because the pain was better than the phantom splash against his side, the sudden shock of wet and warmth.

None of them celebrated what they had accomplished, not when that accomplishment had come at the cost of a man's life. It was a week before any one of them found cause to smile, two before a still healing Angry Joe dared move Baugh's coat from its hook in the systems room.

But with the first move taken each one after came a little easier. Nothing was discarded, but little by little the dolls and family photographs were taken to the stockroom and left in a corner. Molossia began to fill with their own bits and baubles, and for most there came a morning when they woke in their stolen bed and thought _mine._

Linkara made the choice that for him no such day would come. He carried a talisman against it, a toy of felt and plush. He thought it would please the bear's owner to know her toy was not alone.

Critic would have given anything to forget, but he thought always of Baugh's regret when he denied them sanctuary. They had cursed him for it before they marched to battle, thinking themselves justified, thinking themselves **worthy**.

He stood now before the shrine they had built to Baugh and his family, the haphazard pile of lipstick and jewelry, action figures and MP3 players. There was a hairbrush balanced at the top, thick with mingled strands of blonde and auburn. He could picture the morning ritual, the littlest girl squirming at the pull on her tangles, the oldest primping, the middle two rolling their eyes at the fuss. But there would have been comfort in it, this routine from the lives they'd left behind.

"Come to bed."

Chick spoke softly, but there was no mistaking it for anything but an order. Critic turned to her and said what he so rarely did.

"No."

He gestured to the brush, the mound of ordinary things that now carried meaning so much greater than their function. "I did this," he told his twin, "It's my fault."

"Did what?" Chick's hands were on her hips, her smile twisted into a scowl, and this was the side of her the others never saw. This was his sister, and he could not help but find her beautiful. "Brought us home? Baugh was a selfish old man and he got what was coming to him. And Linkara was the one who took his skull off, not you."

Maybe so, but he had been Critic's gun.

She had to stand on her toes to grip his chin, digging in with her nails when he tried to look away. "You did what you had to do," she said, "Don't forget Marzgurl wasn't the only one Baugh killed. Now knock off the pity party and come to bed."

He could have argued, **should **haveargued. Baugh had never sought out trouble, only defended his home when trouble found him. Marzgurl had died at the man's hand, but only because Critic had given him cause to attack.

But she wouldn't have listened, and it was easier to follow her down the winding pathways to their bedroom. All twelve were identical, just big enough for a narrow strip of a bed and chest of drawers, a tight squeeze for two and an uncomfortable crush for three.

Squeeze in they did, curling up with each other in random combinations that rarely lasted longer than one night. Only Spoony had his solitude, and Critic pitied him for it.

Now Chick not only closed the door but locked it. She moved to reach under the bed for the wooden box hidden there, but Critic caught her wrist.

"Could you...?"

She smiled. Not the little girl grin the others knew, but the vulpine smirk that showed her teeth. Pushed him down to the bed and climbed up after, reckless with her knees, giggling when he gasped and winced.

He shuddered when her hand circled his throat. "I've got ya," she said, tone a mockery of the sing-song whine she used outside the bedroom, "Need me to give you something to cry about, sweetheart?"

"Love you," Critic whispered while he still had the air.

* * *

><p>In the bunker breakfast had been a boisterous affair, the meager portions doled out alongside jokes and banter.<p>

In Molossia their plates were full, but the food tasted bitter for the silence. It was painful to feast and know that Marzgurl would never again raise a glass, worse still to think that even now crawling things grew fat on her buried flesh and bone.

The mess was more than big enough to hold them all. They'd pushed the tables together their first night in Molossia, and in the weeks that followed each had found their place. Spoony between Linkara and Benzaie. Jew Wario beside Phelous and Snob beside Joe, ready to cut meat and open jars when one struggled with his sword and the other with his sling.

And Critic at the head of the table, the last place he wanted to be but the only place left open for him. He ate of rehydrated stew that curdled in his stomach and when finished threw down his spoon and stood.

It should have earned a flinch or two, a startled jump from Spoony at the very least, but their eyes were dull when they looked at him, too full of despair for questions.

"I know it's been difficult," he said, because he had to say **something**. Had he killed a man for **this**, to watch them pick at the food they'd won, refuse every gift they'd been given?

Surely they owed Baugh better.

"That's a fucking understatment." That was Larios, and Critic thanked him for **reacting** with a smile.

"Yeah," he agreed, "I know, believe me. What happened...it was a clusterfuck, start to finish. I'm sorry. If I could take it back and put us back in the bunker, I would."

Expect maybe he wouldn't. Maybe more of them would be dead now if they'd stayed. Maybe all of them.

"But we've got to pull it together. Snob, you and I need to see if we can figure out the computer. That means someone else needs to take inventory. The turret should be replaced if we can manage it. Point is, there's plenty to do."

It surprised him when Linkara was the first to lift his head. "I'll take inventory."

"I'll help," Benzaie said, and Spoony raised his hand as if it hadn't already been a given that he'd follow.

It was a start.

* * *

><p>The stockroom was a treasure trove; shelves piled high with uniforms and paperclips, MREs and assault rifles. From famine to plenty, and it was almost a game at first to count what they had, to write out the impossible numbers.<p>

Twelve bedrooms, but food enough to last decades, guns enough for an army. They would have questioned it more deeply if they could have overcome their awe.

They started at the furthest end, because closer to the door were the things they could not lay claim to, that haphazard collection of Baugh's belongings. Linkara tried his best not to look, but his hand crept again and again to his pocket, fingers plucking at the ragged ears of his stolen bear.

"Ninety eight," Benzaie said.

Linkara blinked and looked down at his clipboard. They'd been at it for hours and the numbers that had been so exciting at first were fast losing all meaning.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Ninety eight bed sheets," Benzaie repeated, then plopped down where he stood, a jumble of white fur and claws. "I would not think counting should be so tiring."

Not ninety eight individual sheets, but ninety eight **cases**. Linkara shook his head at the boxes and looked down at his clipboard.

"I'm tempted to just write 'more than enough' for the rest," he said, "I'll take the pillows."

Twelve cases. Thirty-six. And then he caught sight of it from the corner of his eye, a hairbrush with worn bristles. The numbers fled, evaporating when he shuddered.

Fourteen. A board book with a bunny on the cover, one he himself had read as a child.

Six. A clip-on earring, chunky plastic with sparkles that caught the light, perfect for a princess in the making.

A blue sheet billowed out and floated down, a shroud to hide the mound from view. "Thank you," Linkara said to Spoony, "I just..."

But he couldn't explain why he could carry the bear but felt sick at the sight of the rest of it. One reminder of his crimes was reminder enough, and it made him feel a coward.

"Okay?" Spoony asked, or tried to. It came out thick and garbled, but the noise he made when he tried to clear his throat was worse.

Once all of the altars had taken their turn while Spoony slept, but since they moved to Molossia the nights belonged to Black Lantern. His rumbling snarls and low-pitched yowls were taking their toll, reducing Spoony's voice to the smeared rasps of a lifetime smoker.

"Better," Linkara said. He helped reseal the box the other man had opened and snuck a glance at Spoony's list. He'd gotten further than Linkara would have expected, probably because he wasn't stopping every five minutes to bitch and moan like his partners. "Here..."

"Don't!"

Linkara froze in place, fingers still curled around the candy he'd pulled from his pocket. His throat worked, but now he was the one rendered mute, the reassurances he wanted to give too small to settle the fear in Spoony's eyes.

A sudden move. An outstretched hand. Linkara had shouted at the others for doing less, but those rules were not his own. Spoony wasn't meant to cringe from him like this, wasn't meant to look at him that way, expectant and deeply weary.

Spoony recovered first, making a bad job of laughing off his own reaction. "Sorry," he said, "Jumpy today."

He snatched the cherry drop from Linkara's palm, dropping its polka dotted wrapper on the floor and making a noisy show of sucking on it before scurrying off to another row of shelves. To count the guns, of course, because Linkara had been avoiding looking at those too.

A wet nose touched his cheek, stiff whiskers less a tickle and more of a poke. Benzaie nuzzled him, hard enough to rock Linkara back on his heels.

"Don't be upset," he whispered, "You know how he gets."

"With you," Linkara said, "Not me."


	9. Chapter 9

Spoony sat in the dim of Molossia's artificial night and listened.

Listened to them argue, the voices so close now they might have been in his ear instead of his head. He could hardly hear himself beneath it all, the mocking whispers and shrill pleas, the mad laughter and rising howls.

_'Me,'_ he thought as loudly as he dared, '_Spoony.'_

But the name was an empty thing when heard only inside his own head. Empty and without comfort, and what was he meant to hold onto, if he couldn't even hold onto himself?

He tipped his head back against the mattress and risked a laugh because this? This was getting pathetic. There was a migraine hatching in his overworked brain, threatening to crack his too-tight skull, and where were his pills? On the fucking nightstand where they belonged, if only he could have stood to fetch them.

Instead he sat on the floor, all huddled up like some emo **git**, and waited for the room to stop bucking and pitching. Saliva flooded his mouth with each new wave of vertigo, but swallowing would mean puking and he was miserable enough as it was. By now his chin was slick with spit, his shirt sleeves soaked through and heavy where he'd wiped it away.

At least he'd dimmed the lights before he buckled. That was something.

_'Enough,' _he told them, **all** of them, because the cacophony just kept growing and it hadn't been this bad for a long time, not since those first few weeks after the world went to pieces.

But of course they didn't listen because they didn't care, didn't have to feel the pounding pulse of pain behind his eyes.

There was a muffled thud from the other side of the wall. A door opening and shutting. The rasp of wood on wood as a drawer slide open.

Linkara.

All Spoony had to do was call out. Linkara would hear him, would fetch him his pills and sit with him until he was ready to move. He would whisper his name, lisp tripping soft across the _s_, and it would mean something again.

Spoony bit his lip. **Shredded** it, working across older scabs until the blood came. Not as a focus so he might know himself, but as defense against temptation.

He couldn't let Linkara see him like this, couldn't let himself see Linkara, not when the voices were so loud and so hungry.

It was a screaming mess of raw **need**, and Linkara deserved better than that. The Bum wanted a touch he could trust to stay gentle. Lantern a chance to strike back. SWS another punch, because the first had hurt in all the best ways. Insano to teach them a lesson, not just the man who had raised his hand against them but all the rest, the ones who had stood by and watched.

That had been the worst of it when he was young, the crowd that sang and swayed in rhythm to the heavy thwack of the lash against his back. He'd hated them more than his mother, who at least had the courage to string him high with her own hands.

_'Give,'_ the alters said, each in their turn and in their way, and it was because Spoony knew that Linkara **would** that he kept his silence.

There was a limit. Had to be a limit, and look what he'd gotten for crossing it. He'd let himself grow greedy, so when Linkara faltered it was Spoony who fell, what little balance he'd found upset by a single outburst of grief masked in violence.

He'd tried so hard to hide his shaken faith, but The Bum had escaped him in the stock room. Just for a second, but it was long enough to have him cowering like a fool. He knew he could trust Linkara, and the ease with which he did sometimes frightened him. That hadn't changed, for all his idiot cringing, and if it ever did Spoony was well and truly fucked.

And that was the problem. He'd become dependent, leaving it to Linkara to smooth out the rough patches in his path. But there had been a time before Linkara, before Channel Awesome, when he'd done just fine for himself. Sure, his apartment had been a roach infested shithole, but it had been **his** roach infested shithole.

Spoony pushed off from the bed and let himself topple forward. He had to stop then, had to **breath**, head bowed low like a sick dog's.

The nausea gave way to an uneasy burn in his throat. Dignity? Fuck dignity. He dug in with his elbows and pushed with his feet, crawled his way to the nightstand on his belly. It took a few tries to rattle it enough to knock the pill bottle to the floor. He lunged for it before it could roll out of reach, cradling to his chest and scrabbling to open it.

The childproof cap very nearly defeated him. He whined in helpless frustration, clawing at it, made stupid and clumsy by the heartbeat throb of his brain against his skull.

It came free with a pop, spilling the precious tablets out onto the thin industrial grade carpet. He plucked up two with shaking fingers and dry swallowed them, hesitated, and downed a third for good measure.

The pain didn't fade, but after twenty minutes or so he had gained a little distance from it. The vertigo died back to a milder dizziness that was almost pleasant. He staggered when he stood, arms pin wheeling until he found his balance.

He squinted in the gentle glow of the overhead lights, the floor still treacherous when he felt so adrift. Walking was a challenge, but concentrating on the flex of his ankles and lift of his heels gave him a focus outside the ramblings in his head.

He fell against the door when he reached it, hand curling around the knob to test it. Locked, of course, but from the outside, sealed by the touch of Linkara's palm to the reader set in the frame.

It was quiet now in the room on the other side of the wall. He wanted to believe that Linkara rested, that he slept easy and deep. Wanted to believe that on the morrow he would smile again, a smile that reached his eyes.

Spoony slid his hand down to the reader on his side. Let Insano rise just long enough to make sense of the buttons and keypad. Pushed him back again with the ruthlessness of a man too familiar with pain to care about degrees.

He wanted to believe, but he knew Linkara would dream of children thirsty in the desert. Tomorrow he would walk with his head down to hide his sorrow. His hand would slip to his pocket and he would think they didn't see, didn't know how he flogged himself bloody with guilt in the shape of a child's teddy bear.

And still he would be there for Spoony. He would wake from what little sleep he'd managed and listen for Spoony as Spoony listened now for him. All Spoony had to do was call out, and Linkara would come, would give a little more when he had so little left to spare.

For the first time since he woke as someone other than himself, Spoony locked a door from the inside.


	10. Chapter 10

Four monitors, four windows into the desert. Red stone and sun, and it was easy now to find it beautiful from behind the safety of the camera lens.

The coyotes lay panting in the heat, rolling over to expose their bloated bellies to the vultures circling above. The pups played games of chase and stalk, stubby tentacles wriggling in rhythm with the wagging of their tails.

"Cute." Snob's lip curled, a coyote snarl without the fangs. "You wanna test the turrets?"

Critic slapped his friend's hand away from the targeting array. "Don't waste the bullets. What's next?"

They squinted at the display together as they had squinted at their maps, but the nested files offered no starting point to help them chart their course. "VeLo09," Snob said, as if it meant something to either of them, "I think it's part of the master control for the lock down system, but I can't open it."

Baugh had become a hero to his family, a villain to the wanderers he turned from his door. But to Molossia he remained what he had always been, a night watchman trusted with her protection but not her secrets.

His security clearance had given them control over the turrets and video feeds, and in the early days that had been enough. But those sealed files tantalized, sparking curiosity with their nonsense names and bolded font.

At least Snob had some sense of how the system worked, which was more than Critic could claim. He was content to jot down the mysterious VeLo09 along with its suspected function, adding it to a list already four pages long. "Next?"

"SlfDstt 01 through 264. BoNe03232," Snob rattled off, "And fuck if I know what they do. But speaking of- about you and Chick-"

He was focused on the computer screen as he spoke, leaning in too close, making a show of it. Critic shook his head, first in confusion, then in denial when he realized what Snob was asking. He rounded on the smaller man, fists clenching only because taking flight would have been an admission of guilt.

"Whoa." Snob held up his hands and pushed back his chair, but there was no fear in his eyes. If anything he looked intrigued by the reaction, head tipping to the side. "I'm not judging."

"How did you..." Critic asked, because Snob wasn't guessing. He **knew**, and Critic had no idea where to go from here.

"Let's just say the walls here are thinner than they were in the bucker." Snob tried to laugh, a forced little chuckle that made Critic squirm with shared embarrassment. "I just want to make sure it's, you know, safe, sane, and consensual."

"She doesn't do anything that I don't want her to."

Snob had a well-developed sense of drama. Critic couldn't help but admire the way one brow rose ever so slowly, the artful way he stroked his chin. "Dude, I wasn't worried about **you**."

Critic shrugged, knowing he was caught and feeling more exposed than when he lay open beneath his twin. He wasn't aware he was floating until Snob pulled him down, hand lingered on Critic's arm.

"Is it?" he asked, "Safe and all?"

Safe? Not always, but that was part of the fun. Consensual? Close enough. Sane? Critic had no such illusions.

He couldn't remember when they'd gone from siblings to lovers, when her touch became the one he craved. Sometimes the only thing that got him through the day was the knowledge that at the end of it Chick would be waiting, pipe or strap in hand depending on what she felt he needed. She was right often enough that he could tolerate when she was wrong without compliment.

"We're okay," he told Snob, "I promise."

He smiled to prove it, and if Snob didn't looked convinced that was only to be expected. How could Critic explain how the loss of their parents had brought them closer together, so close the edges blurred? He had loved That Other Guy, his brother, but what he felt for Chick was something deeper, darker, a hooked and fierce passion that transcended lust.

Snob nodded at last, and Critic let himself settle fully back to earth. "Lunch?" he asked, gesturing to the clock. It was an unspoken rule that no one ate until all were gathered, and stragglers were greeted with jeers and the occasional biscuit to the head.

They were nearing the mess when Snob snorted and shook his head. "I got to say, I didn't think Chick had it in her. She just seems so- vanilla, I guess."

But of course he saw only what Chick wanted him to see, knew her only as a giggling girl with a flirty smile. His sister had learned young that there was power in hiding her strength. It was amazing what men would do to win the favor of a pretty young thing with perky breasts and empty eyes.

"You have no idea," Critic said, and left it at that.

* * *

><p>Later, when they lay curled close and sated, Critic told his twin of Snob's surprise.<p>

It was a joke to share, but also an admission of guilt. It didn't bother Critic that Snob should know what they were to each other, but Chick treasured her secrets. Snob would look at her differently now, would search for other things he'd missed.

She forgave him with a pinch, a tiny blossoming of pain that made him arch. "He'll tell the others," she said, not a question, and Critic nodded. As gossip went it didn't get much better.

"Good." She wore that smile again, the one that narrowed her eyes and made him shudder. "That means we don't have to use the gag anymore. I like it better when you scream anyway."

So did he, loved every whimper and whine she drew from him, loved that he could give her that. "I'm just not sure..."

Would they follow him, if they knew he knelt before Chick in the night? Did they need to, now that he had given them the haven he'd promised?

"It's a game," Chick said, though they both knew it was anything but. "That's all. It doesn't change anything."

She kissed him, and this was another thing she hid from Snob and the rest, how gentle she could be once she'd had her fun. Let him draw her in, tucked in tight against him as if he were the strong one.

It wouldn't change anything because Critic couldn't afford to let it. He'd become their leader by necessity, and that necessity had yet to pass. Molossia, their haven, was also a target, a promised land that they themselves had killed to secure.

Even now, somewhere in the barren lands there were stories being told. Plans were being made while Chick slept in his arms, a warm weight that kept him tethered when gravity could not.

They were coming, and Critic meant to be ready for them.

* * *

><p>"Forty five of the meat lasagna. Two hundred of the chicken loaf."<p>

Linkara nodded in absent response before the words registered. He wrinkled his nose when they did and looked up from his clipboard. "Wait...what?"

"You heard me," Benzaie said.

The plain boxes looked innocent enough, but Linkara shuddered when he pictured the horrors that lay within. There was a day not long ago when he would have been grateful for food in any form, even loaf. It felt good, to take something for granted again.

"Sounds fowl," he said, and only just managed to dodge when Benzaie swatted at him with a curled paw.

It wasn't his best work, but the shameful pun was worth it for the way Spoony shook his head in disgust. "Cheep," he muttered in his ravaged voice, and Linkara laughed a little too hard at that, a little too long, startled into it by the shy little smile on Spoony's lips.

He wanted so badly to reach for his friend, to tousle his hair until he grumbled. He'd been allowed that once, the sacred privilege of ruffling Spoony up and smoothing him back down.

But he saw the way Spoony held himself taunt, drawn up stiff and still in a way someone else might have mistaken for calm.

Linkara knew better. Black Lantern was close, exposed in the curl of Spoony's fingers and the lift of his chin. His career as a comic book reviewer had prepared him well for this, training his eye to look for the small details that others missed. There were jokes to be found in the backgrounds of panels, a warning in the furrowed lines of Spoony's brow.

"Quite loafing around," Benzaie said, and Linkara could have kissed him for the way it made Spoony snort and throw up his hands.

"Twenty-nine French toast," he said, taking pity. There was food enough before them to last for decades, all of it the same tasteless mush. Linkara couldn't remember if they'd eaten pancakes or oatmeal for breakfast, and when he asked Beanzai the bear only shrugged.

"Does it matter?" he said, and Linkara rather thought it **should**.

He counted his way through the boxes of bean burrito and beef brisket while Benzaie tackled the pork rib and lemon pepper tuna, both of them calling off the numbers to Spoony. They could guess at how popular a meal had been by how many boxes were left, and it felt strange, to have that little glimpse into the lives of the soldiers who had once called Molossia home.

Linkara had just started on the chili and beans when the alarm began to wail. The siren pierced his skull and scattered the flow of numbers, bending him low under the weight of its keening scream.

"Twice in one day?" he shouted across the row to Benzaie, "Really?"

The bear growled at the intercom panel, rearing up as if he meant to tear it from the wall. He landed heavily and shuffled to where Spoony rocked in place, hands clamped tight over his ears.

Benzaie sniffed delicately at the man's cheeks until Spoony huffed a silent laugh and uncurled enough to push his muzzle away. He twined his hands in the shaggy fur, steadied himself against Benzaie's strong shoulder, and something hot and dangerous twisted in Linkara's chest at the sight, a feral jealousy that made him clench his fists.

He wanted to pull Spoony away, wanted him off balance so he would have no choice but to lean on Linkara. Because that was the way things were meant to be, the only way they made sense.

It helped a little that Benzaie looked to him when Spoony straightened, tilting his head in question, trusting in Linkara to judge where things stood.

And this was something that he could still lay claim to, the ability to look into Spoony's eyes and see the transformation before it began. It was in their color, always blue but variable in hue. The Bum's irises were a pale cerulean that shaded to purple in the right light. Indigo meant Black Lantern, and SWS was an ultramarine so vivid it looked painted on. Insano's eyes were azure, shining bright behind the spiral lenses of his goggles.

At the moment he saw only cobalt, only Spoony, and he nodded to Benzaie, making no secret of either his scrutiny or his relief.

The siren chased them through the halls, and by the time they reached the systems room they were panting, the burn in their throats a match for the stitch in their sides. The stockroom was at the far side of the complex and they were the last to arrive, the others already packed in tight.

But still they made way, not for Benzaie but for Spoony, because no one wanted to be the one who stood too close. Linkara pressed past them all, forced his way to the front to where Critic stood.

He slammed his hand down on the cut down switch. The silence that followed wasn't silent at all, the ringing in his ears enough to make him grit his teeth.

"Seven minutes," Critic said, "In an invasion-"

"We'd be dead," Linkara finished for him, "Critic, we **know**. For Funk and Wangall's sake, man, give it a rest. "

"Cut it down to three minutes and I will." Critic looked over Linkara's head to the others, a slow survey that made them blush with the remembered embarrassment of students before a teacher. "I'm not doing these drills to be an ass. It's important. I'm trying to keep us safe."

"We are safe," Phelous said, and Linkara groaned, because he knew what was coming.

Critic slammed his hand down on the console and somewhere in the crowd Film Brain squeaked, an echo of the claxon in a minor key.

"Fuck you. We're **not**. Don't say that, don't think it! That's what got him killed."

And now not even Linkara couldn't look him in the eye, not with the ghost that hovered silent in the air between them.

Ma-ti.

* * *

><p>Toward the end he'd begged for relief from the pain, pleaded in his blood thick voice until Critic left the knife where he could reach it.<p>

But by then he'd been too weak to make the cut, and Critic too weak to do it for him. And Ma-ti had died cursing, died screaming, and still, still had forgiven Critic, had touched his cheek with cold fingers by way of goodbye.

"I'm sorry," he told the others, because it was a low blow to use Ma-Ti against them.

A low blow, but an effective one, for how does one argue with the dead? "I'll lay off the alarm," Critic said, "But I think it's time we started working with the guns."

He spoke softly, gently, too aware of what he was asking of them. But time had dulled the memories of Baugh's skull blown wide, and only Linkara shook his head in vehement refusal.

He let it go at that, sent them on their way without trying to ease the grief he'd inflicted. It was something they needed to remember, how quickly a quiet day could turn bloody.

"Linkara, could you stay?" he asked, and it wasn't a surprise when Spoony and Benzaie also lingered.

"Just Linkara," he clarified, and saw the wordless negotiation that passed between the three of them, Spoony looking to Benzaie, Benzaie to Linkara, Linkara considering them both before granting them leave with a nod.

"I'm not using a gun," Linkara said when they were gone, "I know-"

"It's not that. I get it." As far as Critic was concerned, Linkara had earned his pacifism. He'd given them Molossia, the least they could do was honor what it had cost him. "It's Spoony."

He sighed at the way Linkara stiffened, opening his hands wide to show he meant no harm. "This can't go on. He damn near bite Lord Kat yesterday, and I'm not going to talk about what happened with Film Brain and SWS."

"Just talk to me," he said, because Linkara was still looking at him like he was the enemy. "Something has changed, and I need to know what."

"I hit him." It was a whisper, a confession, as if Critic hadn't been there, hadn't been the one to pick The Bum up off the ground.

"He knows you didn't mean it," he offered, but they both knew that wasn't quite true. Spoony knew, understood too well how pain could break a man. The Bum understood only that he had been hurt by the one he trusted most. He couldn't see that Linkara had been hurting too, too locked in his pain to respond to another's. "So you screwed up. How do we fix it?"

"I don't know," Linkara admitted, "Benzaie-"

"Isn't you," Critic said, "Whether Spoony likes it or not, you're the one he needs."

He hadn't missed the way Spoony looked back when he left the room, the longing on his face that made him look younger than his years.

"You promised me you'd look after him." Because Spoony had been his to keep and care for once, back before Linkara joined the team at Channel Awesome. He'd given him away as a father does a daughter because he knew the longing went ways, and there were days he wanted to slap them both for settling for mere friendship. "I can't have him terrorizing the others. Get him under control, Linkara."

"I'll try," he said, but Critic couldn't settle for that.

"Don't make me do it for you," he said, and let Linkara decide for himself if he meant it as a plea or a threat.


	11. Chapter 11

The tension had them leaning forward in their seats, and they sucked in their breath in unison at the first tentative stab of the fork.

The gray slab of gelatinous meat parted reluctantly around the tines. Snob raised a jiggling chunk high, and someone gagged on his behalf when he sniffed at it.

But he looked more confused than disgusted, nostrils flaring as he tried to work out the puzzle. "Smells like tuna," he said, "That's- weird."

He touched his tongue to the bit of chicken loaf, an act of bravery that made them gasp. "Not too bad. Kind of fishy."

And in it went, that glittering poultry jello with its mystery stripes of green and yellow. Snob rolled it around his mouth, head tilting to the side as he considered its nuances.

"It's a little strange," he said, "I think-"

And that was when the full terror hit home. Snob's eyes went wide and he fumbled for his water glass, gulping it all in one go. He swallowed hard, and they cringed for him, knowing it was the loaf going down.

When he began to retch the people closest to him rose and scattered, clearing the potential splatter zone with impressive speed. It was a near thing, but Snob managed to regain control with a rattling belch.

"It's **sweet**," he said when he was done gasping. "With this weird chicken-fish thing going on. And I think there's mint involved and I don't know, orange or something? What the **fuck**."

He prodded the chicken loaf with his fork, making it dance and shimmer until Paw snatched the plate away. He dumped it into the trash and the sound it made it when it hit bottom was all wrong, a meaty thunk instead of the expected splat.

"Desperate minds mean desperate measures," Paw sung, but he shook his head to show they weren't quite that desperate yet.

"Don't waste food," Critic chided, but he was smiling.

"That was **vile**," Snob said, "Anything with 'loaf' in the name has no business being sweet. There's no way to prepare yourself for that shit."

They laughed at his pain, easy and unrestrained, a rising chuckle that swept the room. When it passed they looked to each other, a little shocked, a little ashamed, not sure if they were meant to have laughter in this room where Baugh and his family had taken their meals.

They looked to Linkara then, as if he had the final say. So he gave them what they wanted, laughed again so they would know they could. It was a gift he could give them, and Marzgurl would have wanted laughter, would have wanted them to go on living after she was dead.

And suddenly Molossia felt fully their own, felt like home, and they were talking over each other, the guilt and grief still close but no longer stifling.

But when his part was done Linkara fell silent, let his smile slip away and his shoulders fall. He took comfort in the banter, but the one person he wanted to trade quips with was the only other person not talking.

"I could get you something else," he said, because if Spoony glared at his plate any harder the mac and cheese on it was likely to combust. "Soup, maybe?"

Swallowing must have been torture on his raw throat, but Spoony forced down another forkful of noodles and neon sauce. Linkara hadn't known it was possible to feel pity for a person and want to shake them silly at the same time, but he was used to Spoony being stubborn, not **stupid**.

"You're punishing yourself, not me," he said, but if that were true he wouldn't be wincing every time Spoony grimaced. "How about jello? Cherry, not chicken."

Spoony looked up long enough to roll his eyes, and Linkara saw the second it registered with him how close the others had wandered. They'd forgotten themselves, and Linkara hadn't been watching, too busy worrying about Spoony getting enough to eat to do the job of keeping him **safe**.

Joe was on the man's other side, talking with his hands, too much movement too close, but that alone might not have been enough. It was Paw crossing back to his seat, passing through Spoony's peripheral vision instead of skirting wide like he should have. Snob tossing a balled up napkin at Critic, a throw that went wild and rolled to the edge of Spoony's plate.

Spoony jolted to his feet, ungainly in his panic, knocking his chair to the floor in a clatter. He tripped over it when he tried to back away, and it was The Bum who landed hard on his rump, kicking out even as he tried to scramble away.

Linkara caught a solid blow to the knee. The first shock of pain was sharp and bright, but what followed after was worse by far, a heavy grinding throb that buckled that joint. He caught himself against the tabletop, gritting his teeth only because he couldn't find the breath to curse.

He reached down and pulled the chair away before The Bum hurt himself against it, throwing it to the side without regard for the shins it might bruise. "Nobody move." The order was whispered, because shouting would only make thing worse, would be a cruel thing to do while The Bum cowered at his feet. "Be still."

But they were already frozen, raised arms trembling with the strain of it, even their faces twisted up and strange. They knew the rules and the risks, knew to stand aside and leave Linkara to clean up the mess.

The Bum reached the wall and crouched there, greasy hair and white rimmed eyes, curling up to make himself smaller. Fast food wrappers were thick around him, bright logos that made Linkara think inanely of the pleasure of burgers soaked in fat, of the salt crisp crunch of fries.

"You're okay." Linkara bent at the waist (slowly, so slowly it **hurt**) and stretched out a hand. "Come here?"

The Bum's eyes darkened.

Black Lantern lunged. Linkara met him halfway, took him down with an inelegant cloth lines that carried more force behind it than he had intended. They hit the floor together, Linkara's knee cracking against the tiles with a sound too reminiscent of chicken loaf hitting the bottom of plastic garbage can.

"Tom!"

It came out weak and breathy, but Handsome Tom listened. He was there before Black Lantern could recover, pinning him down with insulting ease despite his thrashing. Linkara lay where he had fallen, taking a few precious seconds to simply breath, to push back that rotten pulse radiating up his leg.

"Take him to his room," he said when he could. "Be gentle."

And as he levered himself off the floor and followed, he could feel Critic's eyes on his back. Could feel him thinking, feel him judging, and the pain of yet again breaking his promise was a deeper ache than his swelling knee.

_'I'm trying,'_ he thought, _'It's just it keeps getting harder.'_

* * *

><p>The noises drifting from the bedroom reminded Linkara of the yipping screams of coyotes at dawn. He leaned against the door, fingers drifting across the sensor without settling long enough for it to get a read.<p>

"I could go in," Benzaie said, "If you wanted."

His flattened ears betrayed him. He'd grown closer to Spoony over the past weeks, but the alters still frightened Benzaie. Linkara waved away the offer, stifling a smirk when the bear sagged in relief.

"Probably just have to wait it out," he said, "When he's this far down..."

Far enough down to go straight from The Bum to Lantern, and that had only happened once before, that very first day after the Fall.

And it worried him, because here again he didn't know the trigger. No one had slipped out of position, dared to cough or swallow. As far as he could tell, they'd done everything **right**.

"There wasn't any time to stop it," Linkara said, daring Benzaie to disagree and hating him when he did.

"Not once it started, no, but we could have done a better job at crowd control."

At least the guilt was shared between them. If this was to be the new way of things, if Spoony chose to put his trust in Benzaie, Linkara would step aside. All that mattered was that Spoony should have someone he could depend on, someone who saw through the rest of it to the man who blushed at compliments and raged at bad movies.

_'If you hurt him...'_ he thought, and understood how it must have been for Critic in those long ago days at Channel Awesome, when Spoony first started to drift away from him and to Linkara.

"Linkara?" Benzaie asked, and he realized he was glaring, could feel the tension of it in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, "It's just...it's been a bad day."

Benzaie rose, all white fur and bulk, and swept him up. Linkara burrowed into the hug, hiding his face against a chest that smelled of dark musk and floral shampoo.

It was heavy, smothering, but Linkara felt better for it when Benzaie lowered him back to the floor. He slapped his flank in thanks. The toothy grin he got in answer made him wonder, not for the first time, why it was that Spoony flinched from a hand but not from a paw, with its black claws that curved so wickedly.

And it sickened him when he realized the answer, because why should Spoony fear the bear? Why indeed, when the animals who featured in his nightmares, who had painted themselves with his child's blood and made offerings of his suffering, had been human.

He knew he should Benzaie that he should go in after all. And he knew the man would, despite his worries, would let Lantern chew his ears if it would help Spoony come back to himself.

"I'll call you if I need you," he said, and pressed his hand to the lock.

He hadn't taken two steps inside before Lantern was throwing himself against the limits of his chain, hissing at him like a cat, like a snake, a wild thing puffing up because it knew it was vulnerable.

Linkara ignored him, edging around the perimeter of the room to settle himself cross-legged in a corner. He cracked the ice bag he carried, waiting for it to grow cold before settling it on the lumpish swell of his knee.

It was so much easier with The Bum. Linkara could draw him close, could pet him until he purred and let Spoony go. With Lantern it was a waiting game. All he could do was sit quiet and still, let the alter exhaust himself enough to weaken his hold.

Lantern paced, a hunched parody of a stalk that carried none of the grace expected of a predator. Fought his tether with the ignorant frustration of a fox in a trap, growling his frustrations as if he could intimidate the handcuffs into opening.

Linkara was starting to doze when the growling stopped. He looked up, hopeful, but it was Lantern who looked back, balancing himself in a crouch with his hands on the floor.

"What?" he asked, then rolled his eyes at his own stupidity in expecting an answer.

He got one of a kind when Lantern began to wail, a low atonal keening that brought the hairs up on Linkara's nape. It was a mournful song, and he'd never known Lantern to sound anything but angry.

"What's wrong?" he asked again, and Lantern pulled toward him, hands going white and bloodless from the pressure he was putting on his wrists. Those indigo eyes were focused not on Linkara's face but lower, his wail breaking up into drawn out whimpers.

Linkara looked down, then up again, confirming that it was indeed the ice bag that was drawing such attention. Mystified and ever so slightly amused, he picked up the blue bundle and swung it gently through the air, smiling at the way Lantern followed it with his hands.

"Sorry, buddy, no go." He wasn't sure what was inside the pack, but he knew he didn't want Lantern eating it. "Anyway, I sort of need it. I don't think anything's broken, but you pack a punch."

His voice had taken on the same cajoling tone he used with The Bum, because he could see The Bum in the neediness of Black Lantern's grasping hands, in the way he begged with his eyes.

Eyes that stayed indigo, and when Linkara refused him he threw back his head and howled. And there was the anger, transforming Lantern again into a feral thing that thrashed and kicked. He would have shattered his wrists if Critic hadn't given them thicker cuffs to use, padded well with sheepskin and lined with leather.

The alter turned a circle, chasing himself, and then again did something new. Something terrible, dipping his head to rip at his own arms with cracked and broken fangs.

Linkara scrabbled up, wavering on numb legs, the ice bag sliding forgotten to the floor.

He caught Black Lantern's head in his hands, pulled him close without regard to the danger. "Don't," he begged, "Oh, please, please, don't."

Teeth pricked at his throat, but Linkara closed his eyes and held tighter.

Lantern moaned in his ear, once, twice, and it wasn't until the third time that Linkara realized he was trying to **speak**.

"Huuurrrttt..."

"I'm sorry," Linkara whispered, as if that could be enough.

But the alter snarled at him, reached down as best he could while chained to touch Linkara's knee. He flinched at first, anticipating pain, but Lantern was gentle, careful, claws ghosting over the hot swelling.

"Huuurrrttt..." he said again, but the ache in Linkara's leg was **nothing**, nothing compared to the one in his heart. He'd promised to take care of Spoony, but even now, locked in a struggle with an aspect of his own fractured mind, Spoony reached for him. Not to take comfort but to give it, and Linkara did not deserve such a friend.

"I hurt you first." Linkara drew Lantern up, then pushed him back a step so he could look him in the eye. There was nothing left of the bruise that had once darkened it, but the alter shied back when Linkara cupped his cheek, flashing his fangs in warning.

But Linkara knew now he wouldn't use them. "I hurt you first," he repeated, and when Lantern tried to turn from him held tighter. "You're angry. So be angry. I can take it, and I'm not going anywhere."

He could picture it so easily. A boy who wanted what all children do, to love his mother and be loved in return. When she told him she was proud, when she told him his pain was a beautiful thing, a noble thing, how could that little boy risk anger? Risk hate, when the one who hurt him was the only one who loved him?

Claws raked thin lines of blood down his chest, but that wasn't what Linkara wanted, what Spoony needed. He moved behind Lantern, crossed his arms across the heaving chest, held on when he bucked and screamed.

"Say it. I hurt you."

The scream rose in volume, built and built until it died with a sudden indrawn breath.

And then it was Spoony in his arms, and it was all Linkara could do to hold the man together while he shook himself to pieces.

"Fucking punched me, you bastard. What the fuck, Linkara? You didn't- you didn't have to do that!"

The words were tortured, guttural and so slurred he sounded drunk.

And Linkara listened, gave no excuses or explanations. He rocked them both while Spoony brought up all the bile, all the poison, spitting out terrible words that Linkara took them for his own, because Spoony had carried them long enough.

It went on from there, a litany of the small hurts Spoony had absorbed with a smile or brushed aside with a quip drenched in sarcasm.

The way the others spoke too clearly to him, too loudly, as if addressing a child and a slow one at that. The jokes that weren't shared for fear of upsetting him when being left out was far more hurtful. How they'd gone from his friends to his keepers, looking to Linkara first before they approached.

Further back, before the Fall, the jealousy when his videos had gone so quickly to the front page. The constant demands for crossovers and cameos, pushing and pushing until his own output suffered.

"Fuckers hated me for getting more hits, but you all wanted a piece of it, didn't you? Then I end up as The Bum for four days because I'm so stressed, and I'm the one who gets to feel like an asshole for screwing up the anniversary shoot."

Further back still, before Channel Awesome. The men who reacted to The Bum's panhandling by spitting in his face. The men who expected Spoony to pick up where SWS left off. The store clerk who called the cops when Insano tried to buy one too many bags of fertilizer.

The guards at the prison, the state assigned lawyer who hadn't listened when Spoony said he couldn't remember. The psychologist who preferred keeping him sedated to helping him. So many years lost before the man retired and his replacement taught Spoony ways to cope and signed his release papers, sending him back out into the world with the comfort of a diagnosis.

And finally down to the root of it all. "You know what hurts the most?" Spoony asked, and Linkara had to strain to hear, to understand, the man's voice scraped down to the thinnest of whispers.

"My mother was a goddamn moron. Aliens? And I'm the crazy one? Some cult tells you your kid is a vessel for a fucking **alien**, tells you you have to beat him up to bring it down and you say what? Hand me the fucking poker? I'm glad they shot her. I'm fucking ecstatic."

He fell silent then at last, let Linkara lead him to the bed and free his wrists.

Linkara pulled the first aid kit from under the bed and went to work bandaging the wounds Spoony had inflicted on himself. The bites were deep, their edges torn and oozing still. Linkara wiped away the slick of blood and shook his head in despair.

"Idiot," he said.

"Jerk," Spoony shot back, tone too serious to be teasing.

And then he was crying. For the first time in all the years Linkara had known him. Perhaps for the first time since his mother told him that his suffering would save the world by drawing the pity of a green god with star filled eyes.

Linkara expected him to fight it when he wrapped him in first a blanket and then his arms, but Spoony leaned against him without even token protest. He wept without sobs, a slow steady leaking that drained his strength with the tears.

When Linkara shifted Spoony scrabbled at his shoulders with rough hands, a wet noise of protest grinding in his throat.

"Hush," Linkara told him, "Not going anywhere. Staying right here."

Getting them both stretched out on the narrow bed was an awkward maneuver, but Linkara managed it without dislodging the man who clung to him so tightly. Spoony sighed when they were settled, looping a leg over Linkara's with a disregard for personal space that spoke to the depths of his exhaustion.

"Left me before," he mumbled, and it should have been an accusation, not this sleepy statement of fact. "Wanted you to. Thought it would be easier."

"Was it?" Linkara asked.

Spoony opened his eyes long enough to pin Linkara with a withering glare.

Linkara laughed and gave in to old temptation, tousling the long hair until it crackled with static. It made Spoony grumble, and that was when Linkara knew they were going to be okay.

"I'm sorry," he said anyway, not for the hair but for the rest of it, but Spoony was already sleeping, tangled close, smearing tears across Linkara's shirt.

And if Linkara took advantage of the moment to press a kiss to the top of the dark head, that was his own business.


	12. Chapter 12

Critic dreamed often now of dead friends.

Ma-Ti and the others. Close enough to touch, watching him with shadowed eyes.

And yet their silence was a condemning thing, and Critic woke in tears. Chick was there to wipe them away and punish him for breaking, but it didn't make it better, didn't scour him clean of the guilt he carried still.

The others treated him no differently now that they knew what the twins were to each other, but it was Chick who had changed, who went to Snob and told him of the nightmares. For Critic's own good, or so she claimed, and Critic surprised himself by doubting her.

Could he not have one thing for his own, even grief? He needed that, because he was giving them the rest, his fear, his anger, pushing them to practice, stay sharp, stay **ready**.

The next time he woke, heart pounding, Chick warm against him, he lay silent. Buried his face in the pillow so that she would not hear him, would not wake, so that he might keep his sorrow. This terrible sorrow that only made the fear, the anger, burn that much brighter.

In the darkness, Critic wept.

In the darkness, Critic clenched his fists.

* * *

><p>"I remember it because even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the dudes are still macho jerks who think any movie with a princess is automatically worthless.<p>

"Yeah, still working on the catchphrase."

* * *

><p>They were chosen to venture back out under the sun because they could defend themselves, Phelous with his sword, Tom with his strength.<p>

The desert heat scorched them, brought tears to their eyes and reddened their skin. The wind cooled the sweat that rose, but its touch was unfamiliar and unwelcome after the dead air of Molossia's halls.

They worked to repair the damaged turret with clumsy haste, too harried to cooperate. Leaving Las Vegas they had felt small against the desert, but now they were made large and bumbling.

But in the end the turret stood, and the door that had sealed behind them opened.

They slunk back inside without ever having looked up at the sky, just two more desert creatures taking refuge under the earth.

* * *

><p>"I've got a shotgun! No, seriously, I do. Not really as much fun as I thought it would be."<p>

* * *

><p>They milled about at first, clustered far from the practice lanes and racks of shining weapons.<p>

Lord Kat was the first to take up a rifle. The heft of it took him by surprise, the recoil punching back into his shoulder and leaving it aching and sore.

It was easier after the first echo faded. Easier, and in its way familiar, for hadn't they played this game? Had it been the same for the soldiers who practiced here before them? Comparing their scores, trying so hard to pretend that paper targets were all they would ever kill?

Of them all, it was Film Brain who proved himself a crack shot. They praised him until he swaggered, but their eyes and his were uneasy, their smiles tight lipped.

Critic could see the fear in him, the knowledge that he held in his hands the power to kill, a weight heavier than the largest of their guns.

His little boy was growing up.

* * *

><p>"And why aren't scientists lining up around the block to study and dissect the talking chipmunks? Because the plot says so, of course!"<p>

* * *

><p>The squabble started off friendly enough, a revival of an old debate on the merits of Halo and its sequels. Joe was on his feet, Spoony leaning forward to argue the point, but it was just their way to treat such things as serious business.<p>

It snuck up on them, the realization that the days of Halo had passed. There would be no more sequels. No more games, no more movies, no more music.

And it hurt, not their lost livelihood but the sudden awareness that they were strangers to each other. The movies and games had given them a common language, and what did Spoony know of Joe, or Joe of Spoony, save what FPS each loathed most?

The shock of it turned them vicious. Joe fell into incoherent ranting. Spoony was more considered, listing off the ways in which he was right and Joe wrong with bitten off savagery.

The speed with which things had gone wrong took the others by surprise, but Linkara jumped to his feet when Joe made an ill-considered remark involving his sexual prowess and Spoony's late mother. The insult was so generic as to be laughable, and to his credit Joe apologized even as he backed away, one arm raised to protect his throat.

Linkara made a desperate grab...

And caught Spoony by the shoulder. No Black Lantern, no fangs or claws, just Spoony, pulling hard against Linkara's hold. Released, he threw up his hands and stalked from the room, mumbling vicious little curses under his breath.

He passed Critic on the way, bumped him with his shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. And still Critic smiled when he was gone, graced Linkara with a solemn nod, because this?

This was a victory untainted by bloodshed. This was a promise kept.

* * *

><p>"Warning…what follows is the most awesome thing you will ever hear on the radio. Your head may explode.<p>

"Take it away, Harvey."

* * *

><p>They cleared a place of honor for it atop the nightstand, alongside the relics of Linkara's past. A green plastic dagger, a stack of Warrior comic books, a battered hat.<p>

He'd carried them through their long desert trek, tucked away safe in his rucksack, these precious reminders of the man he used to be. A man who laughed easily, who knew pride in himself, who kept his friends well.

How cheap they looked beside the bear, with its plucked fur and unraveled smile. How insignificant. The dagger was a prop, the comics bad writing bound and colored, but the bear...

Someone had loved that bear, cuddled him through rainy nights, whispered secrets in his tattered ears.

Linkara turned to Spoony, to the arms that were already open and waiting, and let himself be held while he struggled to let go.

* * *

><p>"Why top fifteen? Because I've got the time."<p>

* * *

><p>It was Snob who cracked the code of course, familiar enough now with the system to feel comfortable poking around its dark corners.<p>

VeLo09 was indeed part of the lock down system, a control for the vents that ran along the base of each wall. Useless for their purposes, but there were other folders, and having found a way to open one the rest gave up their secrets more easily.

They could seal any door now, but more intriguing still were the doors they could not yet open. Unmarked steel at the end of long corridors, hinting at something **more** to the Molossia they knew.

There were secrets beyond those doors, and the government had been willing to destroy Molossia to keep them. The remote was an ordinary thing, its single button black instead of red, but to press it would bring the walls crashing down.

Snob and Critic examined it together. Locked it away again without a word exchanged between them.

Snob turned back to the computer and moved on the next folder.

* * *

><p>"This is Transmission Awesome, signing out."<p> 


	13. Chapter 13

A lazy month passed.

Not restful, just lazy. They kept Critic happy by practicing with the guns and their powers, but there were more hours in the day than ways to fill them.

They tried, staging impromptu dance contests and keeping at least Larios busy with their reviews. Still they grew tired of boredom, grew tired of each other, familiarity breeding both dependence and contempt.

It wasn't relief they felt when the alarm began to drone. Not quite. But it quickened them, woke them, the fear welcome for the stutter beat it brought to their hearts.

Two minutes and they were jostling for space in the systems room, craning their necks to see over each other's shoulders. The speed with which they obeyed the summons would have done Critic proud if his eyes hadn't been glued to the screen.

She'd made herself comfortable outside their gate, leaning back on her elbows and drawing idle designs in the dust. It made for a pretty picture, this woman stretched out beneath the too blue sky, curly hair dyed red with dust.

But there was a threat to her ease, an implication that she meant to stay until she got what she had come for. They watched her for some little while in silence, as if she would be less of a stranger if they memorized the shape of her jaw, the curl of her fingers.

She was a question, and they looked to Critic to the answer.

* * *

><p>A pretty picture, but only a first glance. There was blood on her chin, trickling down from lips parched and cracking. A tremor to the hand that shaded her eyes from the sun.<p>

She had journeyed far, this woman, and the weary miles were in the slump of her shoulders, in the way she cradled her gun in her lap like a child.

And Critic thought of Baugh, of Susie and her daughters, of poison in a teacup and Marzgurl's outstretched hand.

And he thought of their last night in the bunker, of a promise that had roused them when the hope of sanctuary alone could not

_'We're better than this. We could help rebuild, open Molossia up to others.'_

The crack of static brought the woman to her feet. She looked up at the cluster of faces floating above her and gave an easy wave. Half of them waved back before they thought better of it, and Critic was one of them.

"Who are you?" he asked, but that wasn't the question he needed answered. "What can you do?"

He expected her to bristle at his rudeness, but she only nodded and dug about in her pack, pulling out something so small she held it pinched between her fingers.

The sprout rose up from the cup of her palm, tender and green and growing. And Critic, who once shunned all food not packaged and preserved, joined the rest of them in swallowing back a rush of thick spit. How long had it been, since they ate of something fresh, something that would snap between the teeth and give up its juices?

"This is a tomato." Her voice was deep and husky, gritty with dust and heat. "But I can do it with most anything."

The plant grew thick, unwieldy yellow blossoms unfurling with faint firework pops. She bent to set it down and still it flourished, drooping now under the weight of bulbous fruit.

"Leave," Critic said, and held up a hand before his own side could protest the order. "Come back tomorrow. You'll have our decision then."

She didn't waste time on arguments, just pulled free a tomato and bit in deep. Smiled to show teeth smeared red, and oh, this one was going to be trouble. Big trouble, and Critic had to admire her for showing it when she could have pretended to be meek.

"Your name?" he asked then, because she had earned that much at least.

"Iron Liz," she answered, and Critic would have made mockery if it hadn't suited her so well.

"Nostalgia Critic," he gave in return, and she was the one who laughed, a throaty chuckle that had him smiling when he meant to look impassive.

"Come back tomorrow," he said again, "And leave the plant."

* * *

><p>"Corn!" "Apples!" "Peaches!"<p>

"Does anyone have a reason to let her stay that **doesn't** revolve around food?"

Silence was Critic's answer, broken at last by a petulant whisper. "Strawberries..."

There was too much lust and longing packed into the word, and those closest to Lord Kat squirmed in sudden contact embarrassment. Critic let his head fall back, squinting his eyes against the glare of Molossia's lights.

"I hired these assholes," he told the ceiling, "Morons, the wretched lot of them."

There was a gentle cough, as if someone had meant to clear their throat for attention and had been too shy to manage. "Go on, Film Brain," Critic said without looking over, "Just tell me it's not peas or Brussels sprouts."

"We should help her." Film Brain flushed bright when he found himself the focus of attention and Critic could feel the hum of the boy's power, found himself smiling in encouragement without quite meaning to. "It would help make up for..."

For Baugh.

For murder.

"No. It won't." Linkara spoke gently for the same reason Critic smiled, but there was anger in his eyes, a rage that died so quickly it left him looking bereft. "Still, that's not her fault."

"I don't trust her."

Chick apologized for her suspicions with a shrug, but no one argued or tried to soothe her fears. Even Film Brain only nodded, naive perhaps but no fool.

But Critic knew his sister, knew that what she saw in Iron Liz was not a threat to their lives but a rival for attention. There was a reason Channel Awesome employed so few women, and it hadn't been by Critic's choice.

At the moment her motive mattered less than her support, and Critic lifted his chin in agreement.

"Remember Baugh's wife almost died because they took a chance and trusted someone," he said, "And don't forget we finished the job."

From the corner of his eye Critic saw Linkara wince, no mild grimace but a full body shudder as if he'd been struck. Struck hard and soul deep, and it wasn't a surprise when Spoony jumped to his feet, only a surprise that he curled his hands into fists instead of claws.

"Low fucking blow, Critic," he said, as if Critic hadn't meant for it to hurt.

Across the table Phelous rolled his eyes at them both. "Just take her gun. What's she gonna do, throw petals at us?"

"She could strangle us with vines. Suffocate us in our sleep by dropping a seed down our throats. Grow a little hemlock."

Critic would have gone on, but the fear he wanted was there in their eyes. They'd witnessed death enough to know its shape, could picture each other blue faced and black tongued while the plant wound tight around their throats.

But there was anger too, beneath the fear, a strange and childish rage that had them trembling, as Spoony trembled when Lantern was close. This wasn't about food, for all their salivating pleas. What they hungered for was something new, a break from the tedium of each other.

Liz might someday become a friend, but for now it was more important that she was a stranger.

"She stays in her room or the mess until I say otherwise. Call it a probation period," Critic said, because this was a battle he couldn't win, and maybe he didn't even want to. "No access to weapons or the system, and that includes your guns. If I catch someone leaving shit out, you'll be on bathroom duty for a month.

Meeting dismissed."

* * *

><p>Strawberries.<p>

Not wrapped in cellophane and packaged in fake wicker, but plucked from the bush as they watched, their fuzzy stems still oozing. Sweetly fragrant, the perfume of summer, stupidly poetic but so heartrendingly true.

Lord Kat wasn't the only one to moan at the first bite. The second was better yet, the tongue waking to the tart beneath the sweet, the tiny bitter explosions of the seeds.

And then it was over.

One strawberry for each of them, and Liz herself went without. She watched with nervous eyes while they swallowed up the life she had coaxed into being, chasing the taste by licking their fingers.

It was a minor deception, a lie of omission in letting them assume she could grow enough to sate them all. It must have cost her, to stand tall while the tomatoes siphoned off her strength, to pretend there was no price to be paid for creation.

She held herself ready now, for rejection or violence, hand drifting again and again to the empty holster at her hip. But how could they judge her, they who had done so much worse in the name of survival? When the blood they had spilled would forever stain Molossia's door?

"Thank you," Critic said, but he did not promise she could stay.

Linkara mumbled his own gratitude. He could see the fear in her, in the rigid line of her spine, and it left him in awe of her courage. It had been easier for them, knowing that when they faced Baugh they would do so together, and even the horrors of victory had been less a burden when shared.

But Liz had come to them alone, sat before them now with no one at her back, and Linkara was the first to smile at her, the first to ask a question and begin to know this stranger.

When the first question had been asked and answered the rest came quickly, an interrogation without pretense, at times rude and always awkward.

But Liz was patient with them. She forgave them the intensity of their attention, the way they leaned in close to hear her favorite color. Yellow, and they nodded as if the choice were wise, as if it meant something.

She was as eager to learn their mundane mysteries as they hers, and no wonder. She'd been alone since the Fall, hearing too often the screams of women in the night to risk approaching her fellow survivors.

"Then I heard about Molossia, and I...I could do it anymore. I was tired. I thought people who already had everything wouldn't need to take anything."

"It was game night," she said then, in answer to a question not yet asked, "I was setting up the board while I waited for everyone to show. When the ground started to shake I thought it was an earthquake. The table fell over, and I remember thinking I hoped I could find all the pieces before the cat got into them. The guy across the hall kept screaming..."

They matched grief for grief by telling her of Sage. Of the smell of blood in a small room. How even when he didn't answer their calls they didn't know, didn't so much as suspect he lay crushed and ruined, because death had been an impossible thing then, a pixilated splash of red on a computer screen.

They bowed their heads together, but their moment of silence wasn't quite a moment. They were weary now of mourning, not just for friends but for the world. There weren't tears enough to do justice to the loss, and so they had given up on weeping.

"What game?" Spoony asked, and Linkara would have thought it crass if he hadn't so badly wanted the answer.

"Mansions of Madness."

Only Spoony and Lord Kat had heard of it, but Liz was happy to elaborate, spinning a tale of tentacled monsters and a man driven to the edge of sanity by otherworldly beings.

She stumbled to a stop when she registered their grins, stupid wide and toothy, too feral to be friendly. "What?"

Liz was a nerd. A gaming geek. No stranger after all but a lost member of the tribe. Soon she was arguing D&D editions with Spoony, and when she pulled the Player's Guide from her pack to prove a point those grins grew so broad they bordered on painful.

"Dice?" Spoony asked, and Iron Liz laughed, because **of** **course** she had dice.

Yellow and shimmering, spilled out from a black velvet bag and rolling cross the table. Spoony reached for the D20, hesitating before touching it out of respect for a fellow DM. Liz granted permission with a nod and Spoony rolled it in his palm, eyes softened by the press of memories.

She loved Final Fantasy and metal bands, claimed Venus as her favorite Sailor Scout and knew the rules to Risk. There was none of the shame in her that geeks sometimes carry, and slowly those interests that had begun to feel distant and shallow became again sacred.

And then Liz brought up Ewoks, and shit got real.

Star Wars was a rich mine of controversy, and from Ewoks the discussion moved to the prequels, then on to the extended universe as a whole. Someone made a comparison to Battlestar Galactica, and by the time Digimon was thrown into the mix Linkara had lost track of the argument.

He kept an eye on Spoony to make sure he didn't get too riled, but it was pure pleasure to watch his friends babble on. Even Paw was in the thick of it, singing the theme to the show he felt had the most merit.

"You okay?" Spoony said when he noticed his silence, and Linkara smiled.

"I am," he said, and very nearly meant it.

* * *

><p>They shuffled the bedrooms to give Liz one of her own, stripping her of pack and seeds before sealing her in for the night.<p>

That night Critic dreamed not of Ma-Ti but of a tree draped in moss. An oak, with green leaves that rustled though there was no wind, and rough bark that scraped raw his wandering fingers.

Just a tree against the sky, a postcard image that reminded him there was a world outside their desert, with its thorny shrubs and iron hued grass.

He woke to a box of white tiles, and felt more keenly than ever the press of the earth bearing down from okay.

"...okay?"

Chick's voice was sleep thick and muffled. Critic wasn't sure what he'd done to wake her, wondered if he'd whimpered when he first opened his eyes and realized the bedroom for a tomb.

"Just feeling claustrophobic." It wasn't quite the word he wanted. It implied the room felt too small, not too heavy, all that **weight** bearing down and crushing him flat.

And suddenly even Chick felt like too much against him, her warmth stifling. She came fully to awareness when he rolled and pinned her beneath his bulk.

She retaliated with a knee to the groin, so Critic was left with no choice but to tickle her until she squealed.

"Freak," she said when they lay panting side by side. Critic looked over at the mess he'd made of her, with her glowing cheeks and tangled hair.

"Yeah," he agreed, and what he meant was _'Fuck, I love you.'_

Chick nuzzled into her pillow then and closed her eyes, making a show of it, and Critic did the same. He was drifting on the edge of sleep when he surprised himself by speaking.

"Liz is only the first," he said, and with the words realized that this was the real burden that sat so heavy on his chest.

Chick didn't answer, already snoring, that wispy little whistle that Critic struggled to find endearing instead of merely irritating.

Now it was a comfort though the long hours he lay awake, that terrible thought chewing its way through his mind and leaving it bloodied and raw.

_'Only the first.'_


	14. Chapter 14

They picked up at breakfast where they'd left off.

Bickering over the best Guitar Hero spin off. Listening to Linakra wax poetic over Power Rangers. Joking that the downfall of civilization was just one more hiccup in the release schedule for the War of Throne series.

They were trying, trying so very hard to reclaim what had once come so easy. But the laughter was shrill, the quips forced, and from time to time silence crept over them before the conversation started up again with a desperate lurch. Joy was no longer effortless but something to be nurtured, coddled, a newborn thing with spindly legs.

The plates were empty but the chatter went on, and the slow hours passed a little quicker for it. No one thought of the empty chair in the systems room or the weapons training that had been scheduled for midmorning. No one but Critic, and he chose to say nothing when he might have nagged and scolded.

He could let them have this. Could let **himself** have this, this precious little time.

But at last they'd exhausted themselves, cycled right back around to furry forest dwellers armed with sticks and stones, and it was then that Critic stood.

"There are going to be some changes," he said, and knew he didn't need to explain why. Not when the cause sat among them, fingers still stained from the blueberries she'd grown for their oatmeal.

They'd know all along people would come seeking what they themselves had stolen. But to have Liz here, curly headed and sunburned, made the threat real, gave it shape and substance.

"We haven't always had someone watching, and that has to stop. The heat detectors aren't enough." They ignored anything too small to be a man, but if Benzaie wore a bear's skin, could they trust that a coyote was only a coyote? A lizard only a lizard? "I want someone on duty at all times. Day and night. No games, no company. You sit, and you watch."

He paused then. Crossed his arms to give that pause weight, fighting to keep his face somber and still despite the smirk that wanted to crawl across his lips.

"And Spoony?"

He caught the man mid-yawn, but Critic couldn't much blame him for his inattention. It must have been boring, to listen to plans being made while knowing he would be given no part to play.

"Don't forget to sign up."

* * *

><p>The words didn't penetrate at first. Spoony had lost the context, too busy wondering if Liz would join in if he started to quote Dune to pay much mind to Critic.<p>

He scrambled to remember what the man had been speaking of, the way one does when caught daydreaming. Something about change (or was it Change?) and the monitors in the systems room.

_"Don't forget to sign up."_

Spoony pulled his shoulders back, lifted his chin, did his best to look **capable**. He knew he was being ridiculous, that being expected to take his turn was a gesture only. Already Critic was looking to Linkara, who nodded oh so seriously back, neither of them making the least effort to be subtle.

The others would sit out their two hour shifts alone, but there were unspoken rules in Molossia that came before all others. Most involved Spoony, and it would have bothered him more if they hadn't been so necessary.

He made it easier for everyone by aping ignorance. Pretended not to notice how Benzaie or Joe came scurrying to fill the space whenever Linkara left his side. Outside his bedroom he was never left alone, and his handprint could not open the door to the systems room without someone else there to key in the override.

Another empty gesture, the locks no barrier to what slept within Spoony, but here again it was easier to pretend. Linkara would keep watch over him while he kept watch over the monitors, would be there to drag him out or talk him back if the siren call of the computer overwhelmed him.

It wasn't trust that Critic offered. Just more make believe, a game to keep him occupied, but Spoony couldn't help his pride at being given even this much.

It wasn't trust, but it was **something**.

Best of all, he knew he'd earned it.

* * *

><p>Critic had bigger accomplishments to lay claim to, but there was a simple beauty in the way Spoony smiled shy and flattered, in the tentative way he raised his hand to accept Mikey's high five.<p>

Now came the hard part.

"We need to talk about what comes next," he said, "What we do when someone else comes knocking."

It surprised him when his sister was the first to speak, if only because she liked to know the lay of the land before committing herself. "I think we can all agree that Liz has made a **delightful** addition to our little family."

The two women smiled at each from across the table. It looked natural enough, but the mild suspicion in Liz's eyes did her credit.

"We have so much, and there are people like Liz who need help. Why wait for them to stumble across us when we could call them home?"

It wasn't the first time his sister had waylaid him in front of a crowd, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt. Just that morning she'd kissed him soft and sweet while making no mention of this plan, had shared her bed with him but not her thoughts.

"We got lucky with Liz," Linkara said, and it was some small comfort when the others muttered their own doubts.

Even Liz herself spoke out against the idea. "The things I saw..." she said, "There was a boy..."

She didn't finish, but they had their own memories to draw on. A man hung from a street light and gutted like a deer, his gut a red slick hollow, the ribs splintered and yawning wide.

"We don't take just anyone," Chick said, her tone mocking but not cruelly, just teasing them for being so very clever but not quite clever **enough**. "We take a vote, like with Liz."

Critic didn't remember a vote. He'd simply given in, taken by the way Liz faced the camera and sucked tomato juice from her fingers with overacted moans of pleasure.

Linkara was right. They'd gotten lucky.

"So we vote no and they just walk away, is that it?"

That was Snob, all sarcasm and crossed arms, and it surprised Critic again when his twin didn't have a ready answer. She shuffled her feet, biting her lip to make it flush with color.

_'Clever girl,_' Critic thought.

"Then we give 'em a taste of the turrets!" Joe rode to the rescue with hands pointed like pistols, throwing in rat-a-tat sound effects for good measure as he cut down invisible foes. It took Spoony growling to make him stop, and by then Linkara was looking more than a little green.

"I'm sure it won't come to that," Chick said as Joe dropped shame faced to his seat. "But if it does, we have the right to defend our home."

The words were matter of fact, but there was a bite to her tone, that sharp edge that Critic knew so well. The others blinked at her, taken aback because this Chick was not the one they knew, the blushing girl who followed where Critic lead.

This was his Chick, his narrowed eyed woman with a raptor smile.

"And just think," she said, "Liz brought us fresh food. We could ask for anything we wanted, anything we needed. They'd owe us."

_Ah_.

That got them thinking, got them wanting. Monotony had kept them scavenging for distraction, and by now even Baugh's manuals on military protocol had been devoured with greedy eyes.

But books and movies were too mundane a thing for Chick to risk invasion for. It always came down to power for her, perhaps because she'd grown up with so little of it.

"Games," Spoony said, more wistful than needy, "I'd take the shittiest FMV in the bargain bin at this point."

"I'm sorry," Critic told him, not for the first time, "We should have picked up something in the city."

But there hadn't been time to think of it, in those panicked nights of scrambling through the ruins, in those paranoid days when all the world had been the enemy. No time to remember that what was a hobby to the rest was vital for Spoony, a way of focusing his divided attentions and quieting his mental chatter.

"Games," Chick agreed, casual as a woman jotting down a shipping list. "We could broadcast what we wanted. Call it...a tax."

She did the smartest thing she could have then and went silent. And even Critic felt it, the rising excitement that felt like sacrilege. How long had it been, since he wanted more than what he held?

"What do you say, brother?"

It was sweet of her, to pretend the final call was his.

Critic tried to think it through, trying to fight back the thrill of ambition and reaching for logic. There was safety in numbers, but a greater risk in inviting in the unknown.

But there was the future to consider. Five years from now, ten years, twenty, with only the company of each other, with nothing new to say or do, only the white tiles and familiar faces...

_'We'll fucking shoot each other, _he thought, _'Just to break up the day with a little blood.'_

It wasn't until Chick's hand pulled him down that he realized he was floating. Her eyes were fever bright and he kissed her then, waving off the mocking groans and Liz's confused yelp at seeing brother and sister in an intimate embrace.

"I vote no," Linkara said, and Critic felt his sister stiffen in his arms. "It isn't worth it."

"It's something to consider." It was hard to dismiss for Critic to dismiss the idea so readily, with that heady drive of greed singing between himself and his twin in a closed circuit. "We could set up…"

But Linkara was quick to interrupt, spreading his hands wide as if to beg mercy for the messenger. "Where would we put them?"

Twelve bedrooms, and anyone new would need to be confined until they were trusted. Critic sighed as the fantasy crumbled.

"Fuck," he said, nothing more, but that seemed to just about cover it.


	15. Chapter 15

"Linkara?"

There was a sharp tone to Liz' tone, an impatience that implied this wasn't the first time she'd called his name. Linkara bite off a yawn and pushed up on his elbows, trying to fight off his post nap stupor.

"What's it?" he slurred through another jaw popping yawn.

"He keeps asking for change."

"Mmmm." Linkara let his head drop back onto his pillow. So nice, so soft, his pillow, only a little damp from drool. He turned it over, so it was **cool** against his cheek. Bliss.

Somewhere out in the hall a child was whining. Linakra watched through blurry eyes as Liz half-turned, leaning back through the doorframe. She was making vague noises that were perhaps meant to be soothing, but her husky voice wasn't made for gentle. The whispers sounded like the Joker attempting a lullaby and Linkara giggled at the idea, picturing Liz done up in greasepaint and green hair dye.

Whining. Change.

The Bum.

Linkara allowed himself a stretch that had him groaning from the pleasure of it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and was ready when the alter barreled past Liz and threw himself into Linkara's waiting arms.

"Hey, hey. What's got you going?"

Being hugged by The Bum felt more like a wrestling match than affection. He was all hands, restless and clenching, butting Linkara with his forehead when he was slow in stroking the greasy hair.

"Change." A demand, not a question, and Linkara dug in his pocket. A few quarters, a dime or two, tarnished relics that had value to The Bum alone.

The alter calmed when the coins were poured into the cup of his palm. Smiled up at Linkara, beatific and beautiful, snuggling in against his side as he counted his prize.

"He meant actual change," Liz said with some amusement, "Kind of a weird obsession."

There was a question there, and Linkara flicked bits of plastic and the odd sunmelted DVD off the bedspread as he considered how and if he meant to answer. Her curiosity was only natural, and how often had Spoony himself compared his life to a trainwreck, the kind you couldn't look away from despite the screams of the walking wounded?

"I'll give you some to carry," was all he said in the end, "He doesn't always ask, but he'll throw a fit if he does and no one has any."

Because in the end, it wasn't his story to tell. How Spoony had once struggled to survive on disability checks that forced him to choose between food and heat in the Boston winter. How the jingle of pennies dropped into a styrofoam cup had come to mean something more than charity to him.

He had never believed in his mother's savior, the sky god who mutilated cattle as a sign. But the reading of crop circles and horoscopes were not her only lessons. Humanity was flawed, she'd told him, so much less evolved than those above, driven by base instinct to prey upon the weak.

Then she would pick up the whip, kiss his cheek, and give him cause to believe it.

But there in his cup was proof that stranger could be kind. There were those who passed by with a sneer, but more who spared a smile if nothing else. Spoony hoarded them, coins and smiles both, and wondered what else his mother had gotten wrong.

Now a quarter was pressed into Linkara's own hand. He took it with solemn nod, tucking it carefully back into his pocket.

"Thank you," he told The Bum. It earned him a blush and shy little smile, and it would have taken a stronger man than Linkara to resist kissing the red-flushed cheek.

"Any idea what set him off?" he asked Liz when The Bum's attention drifted back to his shiny prize.

"It was me," Liz said, "I came around the corner and bumped into him."

Straightforward, no apology, and she reminded him of Marzgurl in that. Both had accepted the inevitability of triggering Spoony, and so suffered none of the guilt that Linkara fell prey to.

But where Marzgurl had been steel through and through, 'Iron' Liz had a softness at the core of her that gave her patience. She'd taken the alters in stride, listened when Spoony asked her to keep her distance. But she also sensed when to stand firm, and Linkara had known she'd get along fine the day she got SWS to back off by threatening castration.

Now she leaned forward to catch The Bum's eye, tone as sweet as she could manage, hands open at her sides.

"Did you hurt yourself when you fell?"

A shudder rocked The Bum, a vicious little spasm that had him crying out in the high, shocked yelp of a betrayed child.

And then Spoony was pushing away with rough haste, battering Linkara with elbows and knees. Linkara helped him get untangled by going still.

"I'm fine," Spoony said in delayed reponse to Liz, "Fuck, Linakra, your bed…I'm sorry."

Linkara shrugged. Yellowed newspapers, a headless action figure, a shirt bleached white by the sun. Nothing to raise a stink or leave stains on the sheets, but Spoony's hands were shaking as he tried to gather up the refuse.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

'_For what?'_ Linkara wanted to ask, but Spoony would have a dozen answers. He was too enamored with his shame to let Linkara argue him out of it.

Oh, but sometimes he wanted to shake that shame out of him. It felt like an insult, a dismissal of just how far they'd come together. '_You're doing __**better**__,_' he wanted to shout, and would it kill Spoony to celebrate it?

It didn't take long to get the bulk of the mess cleared away. Linkara plucked the scattered quarters from the blanket, counting them as The Bum had to be sure he'd gotten them all.

"Can I have those?" Liz asked, "For next time."

It could have been taken for cruelty, this casual assumption that there would **be** a next time, that as much as Spoony had improved he would always be shadowed by his smaller selves.

But it was her matter-of-fact tone that settled Spoony and let him respond in kind. "Just throw 'em on the floor," he said while Linkara went to his bureau and pulled out a heavy bag, "It's better if you don't reach toward me. It's not you, it's just…"

His hands sketched a woman shape in the air, graceful swells of breasts and hips. Liz looked down at her own chest, shaking her head at how she measured up against this imaginary goddess.

"Dinner?" Linkara asked when he was done supplying Liz and restocking his own pocket.

"I could eat," Spoony said.

* * *

><p>Shrubs. Rock. Sand.<p>

Critic blinked. Popped his eyes open wide, trying to shock the lazy orbs into concentrating for just a little while longer.

He wondered what bland mush the rest were settling down to. It had seemed right and noble at first, to volunteer to take his watch shift during meals. There was a certain warped satisfaction to be had in sitting down alone, the leader sacrificing fellowship for safety.

But the expected praise had never came, and it was then he realized they expected him this of him, to stand aside so they might sit together.

Playing the martyr was scarcely any fun if no one noticed.

He spun a slow circle in his chair and checked the monitors again.

Shrubs. Rock. Sand.

Movement.

A man, creeping on the edge of the camera's view. Critic held his breath, leaned in close, hand hovering over the alarm.

Then reached not for that button but the kill switch, so that the computer would not alert the others for him.

He had to think this through.

It had been a month since Chick proposed taxing strangers for the privilege of staying in Molossia, and none had spoken of the plan since.

But they had thought of it- when they were bored, when they were irritable, when they remembered this was **it**, not just for today but for all of their tomorrows. Critic could see it in their faces, in the way Spoony's fingers sometimes curled as if he could remember the weight of a controller bridging his palms.

It was better, perhaps, that they went on thinking but not speaking of such things. Because in the end, if they argued, Chick would have her way, and Critic wasn't sure yet if that would mean their salvation or their destruction.

And this man was not like Liz. There was something about his eyes that reminded Critic of the bullies of his childhood, a swagger in his step that said he was used to getting what he wanted.

Or perhaps Critic judged unfairly. It shamed him, to think he might have given way to Liz so easily because some lizard center of his brain had labeled her as woman, less threatening by default than this burly stranger with hairy arms and grizzled chin.

So he gave the man a chance and fired up the monitor. Waited in silence, as Baugh had once done, let him plead his case and ask for sanctuary.

When Critic did speak, it was only to tell the stranger to leave if he valued his life.

The man didn't bluster, didn't threaten or rage or swear vengeance. He threw back his head and screamed up at the sky, and the vultures fell around him, meat sacks with their bones dissolved to powder.

"Open the doors on your own, or I'm coming in," he said.

'_I know you,"_ Critic thought, _'I am you.' _

And because he knew him, knew how it felt to stand outside paradise and be denied entry, Critic reached for the turret controls and opened fire.

* * *

><p>Outside, the coyotes were feasting.<p>

Critic muted the grisly sounds drifting from the monitor, noting with absent concern that his hands were shaking.

"I didn't have a choice," he said, "I could hear the doors rattling. In a few more minutes…"

He was getting the attention now that he had wished for earlier. Film Brain was patting at him like a dog that could be soothed, and Snob seemed obsessed with getting him to drink water.

Only Chick stood apart. His twin, who knew him better than anyone.

Who knew that he was lying.

"I didn't have a choice," he said again, as if repetition could make it true.

"This is why we can't risk broadcasting," Linkara said.

"No, it proves we can defend ourselves," Chick answered, but the others looked away, making it clear on which side they stood.

"I didn't have a choice," Critic said again, this time to Chick, gut twisting at the betrayal in her eyes.

"You did what you had to do." Snob picked up the glass again and pressed it into Critic's still trembling hands, as if the water could wash away his anguish.

"I know," Critic said.


	16. Chapter 16

It was hard to concentrate on the monitors with Linkara squirming in his chair liked an overexcited toddler.

"Would you just go? I can survive five minutes without you up my ass," Spoony growled, because **really**.

"I knew I shouldn't have had that extra glass." Linkara half rose, then hovered in an awkward crouch. "You're sure?"

Spoony forgave him the hesitation. After all, it had been just a few days since Insano had slipped his leash and gotten close enough to the computer to rest his gloved hands on the keyboard.

"I'm sure," he promised, "Go, before something happens we both regret."

Linkara bolted from the room at high speed, heading toward the bathrooms and relief. Spoony watched him go with a smirk before turning his attention back to desert scape on the screen.

And if he sat on his hands, just to be safe, no one had to know.

On the monitors their local fox crept out of the brush, her belly taunt with pups, twin noses sniffing at the scraps the coyotes had left behind. She found a bone and both heads worked to crack open the shaft and expose the marrow.

After that it was war, a quick and savage battle with a soundtrack of yipping snarls. The left head won the prize, leaving the right to lick pitifully at the air.

Spoony bopped his head in acknowledgment of the footsteps behind him, but kept his own eyes glued to the action. A turn at watch only lasted two hours, but it was two hours of watching the scorpions scuttle in the dust. You took your excitement where you could find it, and he'd grown rather fond of the little mutant critter who so often argued with herself.

"You missed it," he told Linkara, "Zull just beat the shit out of Motherfucker for once. It was kind of epic."

"Good for her."

It wasn't Linkara's voice. Spoony froze, but only for an instant. It was just the surprise of having expected one thing and getting another…that was why his heart lurched and his breath caught fast in his throat.

Just surprise, certainly not fear. Only a pansy would be afraid of a friend at his back.

"What's up?" he asked Chick as he turned.

He had another instant to register how close she was.

Close enough to touch, and she did just that, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder.

Fight or flight. He fought, flailing out wildly, landing a lucky slap that set Chick reeling back. He would have run for it then, but she was blocking the door, hand raised to her reddened cheek.

They stared at each. And then Chick was sliding down to sit on the floor, winding her arms around her knees, bowing her head to display the vulnerable nape of her neck.

"I'm sorry," Spoony said as the panic eased, "You…"

'_**Touched**__ me,'_ he wanted to say.

"Startled me," he finished.

"No, I'm sorry," Chick said, "I wasn't thinking…god, I'm such a ditz."

She waited until he nodded before she levered herself up, keeping a healthy distance between them. "Where's Linkara?" she asked.

"He had to take care of something," Spoony said, and smirked to show it hadn't been anything important, "He'll be back in a minute."

Her smile was strangely tender. "Off with Liz again?"

"What? No," Spoony said, then blinked, "Wait- what do you mean, **again**?"

"It's just she's gotten awfully chummy with your boy lately," Chick said.

"Jealously isn't a good color on you." He knew what Chick was doing, hadn't missed the way she'd been sizing Liz up from day one. There was something surprisingly sweet at their self-described "ditz's" attempts to claim her territory. If she'd been a fox she would have been scent marking like mad, but Spoony supposed gossip could leave its own kind of mess. "Anyway, he's not my boy."

"Sure he's not," Chick drawled, and laughed when Spoony scowled at her, "I'm only teasing. I came down to grab the turret manual for Critic. He wants to try installing a third."

Spoony moved aside so she could pull out the spiral bound book from the shelf above the console. She thumbed through it for a moment, squinting at the tiny, dense text before shaking her head.

"You could tell him," she said suddenly, eyes still focused on the manual. "It gets boring, watching the two of you dance around."

"I'll get right on that." It was nothing Spoony hadn't heard before, though Marzgurl had been the last to pull him aside and tell him to man up. He missed her suddenly, a sharp and bitter ache like he'd just now noticed a still raw wound.

"Don't be like that," Chick said, putting the book aside, "It isn't exactly a secret."

She leaned back against the console and made to hoist herself up to sit on its edge, and Spoony realized she really meant to do it, to have **this** conversation with him.

"Look, I appreciate it, but I…"

The rest of his plea was lost under the scream of the alarm. Chick jolted forward, falling off the console and blundering forward into Spoony. She turned just as quickly to slap at the buttons, scrambling to shut down the siren she had accidentally activated. Shock left her clumsy, and it took a few tries before she found the right switch, the silence that followed as much an assault as the noise.

For Spoony, it was like taking a brick to the back of the head. The migraine kicked his legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor to lay huddled and shaking.

Above him, the intercom came to life with a static buzz that had biting his tongue to hold back a moan. "Sorry, sorry," Chick babbled into the mic, "False alarm, go on about your day. Sorry!"

Then she was patting his back and trying to coax him out of his curl, pulling his arms down when they were the only things keeping his head from **exploding** like a microwaved Peep.

"Sorry, I'm so, so sorry," she said, and **jesus fuck **she needed to shut up.

"Linkara," Spoony pushed out between clenched teeth, not caring if it sounded like he was begging because he **was**. "I need…"

Was that the intercom going off again? Spoony was too far gone to be sure, just grateful that Chick had left his side and taken her chirpy little voice with her.

Too quickly she was back, prying at his hand until he gave up and unclenched his fist. She dropped something into his palm, something small and hard and familiar.

A pill.

"It isn't strong." She was whispering now, bless her, but even that hurt, every word sharp angled and biting in, "But it might help."

It was hard to swallow something while in a fetal curl, but Spoony had plenty of practice. Harder still was convincing the pill to stay down. He fell to heavy panting like a woman in labor, which helped to drive the nausea back but kept him from asking Chick to kill the damn lights.

Only minutes later, he was slumped and boneless, blissfully free of pain, unable to work up more than token anxiety when Chick leaned close and rubbed his neck.

"Nice," he slurred.

She was talking again, but he found he didn't mind so much. He heard Linkara's name buried in the rise and fall of her voice and hummed in happy agreement.

Linkara would come soon. He would take Spoony back to his room. He would rub his back, like Chick was doing, but it would be even better because it was Linkara, and Linkara always made him feel good, always knew just what he needed.

While he waited, Spoony thought he might close his eyes. Just until Linkara came to get him.

Chick was still whispering to him when he slid into sleep. The words had long ago lost their meaning, reduced to a pleasant lilting murmur that made him smile.

But deep in his mind, where the monsters dwelt, someone else was listening.

* * *

><p>Benzaie waylaid Linkara on his way back to the control room, bouncing like a pup as he chattered on about his new card design for their ongoing Magic tournament.<p>

And Linkara had stopped. Stood and listened, not thinking much of it, smiling at Film Brain when the boy wandered over and joined in.

And then the alarm was blaring, and Linkara was running, body ahead of his mind and carrying him toward Spoony at a flat sprint.

He skidded to a brief half when Chick gave her apology, and then he was moving again, not quite running now but not quite walking either.

If Chick was in the systems room, it meant she was alone with Spoony, and that had the potential to be a very bad thing indeed.

Spoony had come a long way from his early days at Channel Awesome, when the mere sight of a woman had him fleeing to the safety of Critic's shadow. Marzgurl had dealt with it by refusing to care, plopping herself down beside him at every opportunity until he finally stopped twitching at her approach. But there was still a fear there, buried deep, and Chick wasn't always as mindful as she should be.

"It's probably nothing," he said over to his shoulder to Benzaie, because the bear was right there with him, "I just want to check…"

Benzaie just grunted, and it struck Linkara how lucky they were for their friends. Maybe they didn't always get it right, but they **tried**. They tried damn hard, and that had to count for something.

They were both panting by the time they hit the long corrider that lead to the systems room.

Then the alarm sounded again, and this time it didn't stop.

Linkara burst through the door, expecting to find The Bum, or maybe Black Lantern if Chick had somehow managed to back Spoony into a corner. His worst case scenario was Insano, cackling away and already busy reprogramming the computer into a doomsday machine.

But he'd gotten it all wrong, and there was something far worse, something he hadn't even considered.

SWS had Chick pinned against the wall, her legs wound round his waist, her shirt torn wide to expose the black lace of her bra. They were rutting against each other, but Chick's eyes were wide and wild, hands fisted in the back of the garish robe as if she'd been trying to pull SWS away.

Linkara stood frozen. He could **taste** the lust in the room, metallic and cloying as blood.

Chick managed a scowl. "Little help?"

"I can't…" Linkara took a step back, suffering a jolt of pure desire when he bumped into Benzaie's warm body, "I **can't**. I'll…"

_I'll lose control. _

Because something was wrong, horribly so. SWS worked himself against Chick with a desperation that left him rough and frenzied, his milder perversions overtaken by a wholly animal hunger.

It had never been like this before. Linkara had never wanted so badly to offer himself for the taking, never wanted to be the sole focus of all that **heat**. And this from safely across the room..he couldn't imagine how things must be in the thick of it.

A hard hand caught his shoulder and thrust him aside. Critic pulled SWS off his sister. Threw him to the floor, driving a hard kick into his midsection that had the alter hissing in pleasure instead of pain.

"Get him the fuck out of here, Linkara," Critic growled, "Or I'll swear I'll put a bullet in his head."

He drew his gun to give weight to the threat, and that got Linkara moving. He shuddered when he took SWS' hand to help him rise. Moaned when the alter twined their fingers together and pressed his mouth to Linkara's palm, tonguing the soft skin there with teasing little licks.

"He's not…this isn't him," Linkara tried to explain, "It's all wrong."

SWS seduced. He coaxed, snuck touches, blackmailed if he had to, but he didn't **force**. He could make a person want it, but he couldn't make them **need** it.

The others were crowding into the doorway now. Critic moved in front of Chick while she drew the rags of her shirt across her chest. He was trembling, free hand balled into a fist, but his arousal was evident in his dilated eyes and wide-legged stance.

Film Brain was the first to take a step forward, and SWS rewarded him with a wink that promised filth to come. Linakra pulled him back, trying to protect the alter as Critic protected Chick, but SWS wasn't making it easy.

It was Snob who saved the day, pushing Film Brain aside and getting hold of Critic and Chick. He didn't waste time trying to be gentle, shoving and pulling by turns until he got them out the door.

"Seal it!" he said, shouting to be heard over the still blaring alarm, "Unless you want a literal cluster fuck, seal it!"

Linakra shook his head when Critic looked back at him. Something was wrong, and he couldn't leave SWS if it meant leaving Spoony. "I'll call when it's safe. Just do it."

Critic pressed his palm against the wall. The steel door slid down, sealing with a clink that made Linkara flinch.

There was nothing of Spoony in SWS' smile.

"Oh, darling," he said, "If you wanted to play alone, all you had to do was ask."


	17. Chapter 17

"No," Linkara said.

It might have been the second time he'd repeated it, or the hundredth. He'd long ago lost track, but at least the word itself still had power.

"This game is getting boring." SWS's voice didn't so much drip sex as **swarm** with it, a tomcat's yowl in the night. "I'm up for anything but boring."

He took a step toward Linkara, affecting a pout that made good use of his lips. Linkara ground his teeth together until pain shot up his jaw and drove his nails into his palms.

"**No**."

The insanely blue eyes flashed cobalt. Whatever else was going on, however far down Spoony was trapped, he still knew that word, still respected it. It kept SWS pacing at arm's length, a tight predatory circle with Linkara at the center.

"Spoony, I know you can hear me," he begged, "Please, you have to wake up."

"You don't want to play with him," SWS said, doing his own begging with the sway of his hips, the smell of his sweat, rank and wonderfully male. "He's no fun at all. All he knows how to do is want. But baby, I can give you what you need. I know how to **take**."

"No," Linkara said, but now it was a whisper, too soft and yielding, "No, no, no."

SWS's control shattered. He threw himself forward, stopping a bare inch from Linkra, rolling his hips into the empty space between them.

"Please," he said, a gasp, "Whatever you want, however you want it. Just **let** me."

There was pain in his eyes, agony in his voice, and this too was new and terrible.

"Touch yourself," Linkara offered, "Will that…can you…"

"Like to watch then, is that it?"

SWS didn't wait for a response, and when Linkara closed his eyes it didn't stop him from going to work with enthusiasm.

The darkness helped a good deal less than Linkara had hoped. He could still hear the wet slide of skin on skin, and his imagination was up to the challenge of filling in what went with the sounds.

He'd had some vague hope that Spoony would find his way back when it was over, but SWS hadn't finished groaning before he was pacing again.

Linkara opened his eyes cautiously, afraid of his own actions if his gaze should wander south. SWS's lips were drawn back in a snarl, his cheeks flushed high crimson, and with each stride his breath caught on a sob.

And in that sob was a word, a mantra stolen from Linkara. "No no no…he said no."

Linkara had been faltering, and now he fell. He caught SWS by the arms, drew the other man's body flush against his own, kissed him hard and stood steady against the jolting thrust of his hips.

It took all his courage, all his love, for Linkara to push SWS back. Not far at all, just enough so he could press their foreheads together, leaving them breathing the same warm air.

"No," he said, but gently, "Not that. But this…"

Another kiss, as soft as he could make it. He thought of The Bum, how simple it was to send him on his way with a hug and assurance he was loved. Thought of how Black Lantern gave way easily now that Spoony could give voice to anger without fear of rejection.

So he did for SWS what he had learned to do for them.

He filled the need.

At first there was violence in the way the alter bit at his lips, savaging him with teeth and tongue. Linkara showed him a different way, rewarding him for gentle touch by cupping his cheek, thumb stroking over his cheekbone.

"You take such good care of me," he said between kisses, not to SWS but to Spoony, "But now you need to wake up, sweetheart, so I can take care of you."

It happened slowly, without the racking seizures that came when Spoony had to fight for it. The robe dissolved to t-shirts and jeans, the eyes lightened to a bastard hue.

When he was wholly himself Spoony turned away, hiding his face behind his hands.

But Linkara was done with shame. He was done watching Spoony deny himself, done pretending that the thing between them was friendship and nothing more.

"Look at me," he said.

Spoony shook his head. Linkara leaned in to kiss his forehead, ignoring his flinch and shudder.

"Look at me."

He gave him another kiss for obeying, this one on the lips, a simple dry peck meant only to comfort. "Why are you upset?" he asked, and Spoony barked out a sarcastic little laugh. "No, tell me."

"I…I **hurt** you."

"You didn't," Linkara said, "I said no, and you listened. I know it was hard, but you **listened**."

But Spoony tried to shake him off, both his hands and the truth. "Chick…"

"Didn't say no, did she?"

Spoony stilled, thinking it over for a long while. Surprise dawned across his face, and joy followed on its heels, easing the furrowed lines of his brow.

"She didn't," he said, "I swear, she didn't."

And that was something Linkara would deal with later. Before now the danger in SWS's power had been what it drove them to do each other or themselves. They all knew the hold that simple, two lettered word had over the alter, and it had kept Spoony safe from himself.

"If she had, you would have listened," Linkara promised, "You did so good, sweetheart."

Spoony scowled at the pet name. "Not a child," he mumbled, but the petulant tone of his voice made him sound like one. "Not a girl either."

"No, I noticed that." Linkara nodded his chin, and had to laugh when Spoony went pure scarlet at realizing his pants were still gaping wide. He turned his back, mumbling a curse when he was hasty with the zipper.

When he turned around his cheeks were still flushed but his eyes were bright, too relieved at what he hadn't done to worry over what he had.

"I want to tell you a secret," Linkara said, "I think you already know it, or at least I hope you do, but I'm going to say it anyway."

He motioned with his fingers until Spoony rolled his eyes and canted his head so Linkara could whisper in his ear.

There were a thousand reasons why he shouldn't do this. But Spoony was beautiful when he was happy, and Linkara wanted to be the one to tell him that.

"If it had been you," he breathed, "I would said yes."

* * *

><p>Linkara didn't give Spoony a chance to respond. He kissed him one last time, on the vulnerable skin just under his ear, and walked away.<p>

He wanted to give the words and their meaning a chance to settle in. Didn't want Spoony to feel any pressure, not from Linkara, not from his own body, so recently prey to another's impulses.

So he activated the intercom and called for Critic, promising the danger had passed.

Critic was silent when he opened the door. Silent as he lead them down the winding hallways to the bedrooms. It was a contagious thing, that silence, and it made Linkara aware of just how loudly he breathed, of the awkward clop clop of his footfalls.

It felt like a walk of shame. Linkara had a sickening suspicion that it was meant to, that the clothing discarded here and there in piles had been left as evidence of Spoony's crime.

It worked all too well. Spoony's face fell at the sight of Paw's hat, Tom's shirt, Mickey's tie. But the choice had been their own, and if there was regret to be had, it wasn't on Spoony to feel it.

Critic was still silent when they came to the end of the row, when Linkara tried and failed to open Spoony's door. He reached over Linkara's shoulder to trail his fingers across the touchpad, and the click as the lock disengaged was very loud in the hush.

'_I warned you,_' his eyes said when Linakra rounded on him, _'I warned you, and you failed.'_

"I didn't fail," Linkara said in answer to the unspoken accusation, "Neither did he. He's been doing better. You **know** that."

"Linkara, it's okay." Spoony was hiding behind his hair again, looking between them like a child caught between arguing parents. "I get it, I do. Critic's right."

"He's wrong," Linkara said, "Critic, he's fine. He's safe."

"Five more minutes." Critic's voic was soft, reasonable, with none of the squealing, exaggerated rage he had built his career on. "Five more minutes, and he would have **raped** my sister. Is that what you call safe?"

Linkara caught Spoony's hand before he could fold under the weight of the accusation, tugging him closer so they stood shoulder to shoulder. "He wouldn't have," he said, "Chick didn't say no, Critic."

"She says she did."

He'd made his choice already who to believe. Linkara could see it in those flat, pitiless eyes, and he couldn't even blame him for it. Chick was his family and his lover both, and who could he trust if not her?

"I remember…" Spoony said, but his voice rose at the end, turning what should have been a statement into a question. "She...she touched me..."

Critic rose up slowly from the floor, and when he spoke again it was through clenched teeth, that distant pleasant tone now low and gritty. "Fuck you. Are you blaming my sister?"

"No one is blaming anybody," Linkara said, "Something went wrong."

"Then how do we know it won't go wrong again?" Critic asked, "Chick was lucky she could reach the alarm."

"I had a headache. It was loud, and I had a headache," Spoony said, all in a rush, squinting up at the ceiling as he tried to work through the memories. "Chick gave me a pill. I wanted her to call Linkara. I think…I fell asleep?"

"She gave you a pill?" Linkara slapped his thigh in triumph when Spoony nodded. "That's what did it. I'm sure Chick was trying to help, but we tried a bunch of stuff and the Vicodin was the only thing that didn't mess him up."

"It doesn't change anything," Critic said, "He's proven what he's capable of."

His right hand still held Spoony's, but Linkara's left shaped into a mockery of a pistol. For the first time since they took Molossia he felt the hum of energy traveling through his veins, green and lethal.

"He's fine," he said again, struggling to keep that dangerous hand pointed at the floor instead of Critic's head. "Just don't drug him. And even then…I was in that room half an hour, and he didn't touch me."

He felt the hand in his tighten down, a clench too brutal and sudden to be voluntary, and was ready when Spoony lurched forward.

If only Spoony could have waited until they were alone. Another transformation on the heels of the first would do nothing to reassure Critic. But Linkara did his job, caught The Bum before he fell, let him huddle close and bury his face against his chest.

"He didn't touch me." Linkara wanted to shout it, as if sheer volume would make Critic listen, but it would only have frightened The Bum. "He fought so hard. He did **good**, Critic."

"Critic said she was teasing him. About you and Liz. Maybe he was angry and wanted to get a little back. Just because he won't hurt **you**, doesn't mean he won't hurt someone else."

The Bum in the mess, the way he'd become Black Lantern without becoming Spoony first. Hadn't there been a second or two when The Bum had been clawed, when Lantern had worn a knitted cap?

What happened if the alters blended at the edges? If SWS's lust touched Lantern's rage?

_She was teasing him. _

"I'm sorry," Critic said, and the pity in his eyes meant he'd seen Linkara's doubt. "I'll trust you not to let him out without permission. If you do, I'll have to take away your access again and post a guard. Please don't make me do that."

He dropped to the floor and gestured for Linkara to give him his hand. Pressed it to the reader and keyed in a command that made it beep long and low.

"This will hurt him," Linkara told him, "It'll set him back. I don't know…I don't know if he can live like this."

Critic sighed, and he looked frail suddenly, frail and very tired.

"I'm sorry," he said again, "But if either of you have a problem with the rules, you know where the door is."


	18. Chapter 18

Critic saw the others on their way, the less urgent to their quarters, the others to whatever hidden corner they happened upon.

And then he was alone with his sister.

He took her there in the hallway, up against the door, desperate to replace the stink on her with his own. On the other side of the barrier SWS held Linkara in thrall, and Critic wanted to outdo him, wanted to prove to Chick he could give her more, could give her everything.

Later, spent and panting, he let himself be coaxed back to the bedroom. Let Chick turn the tables and take what she needed, stake her own claim on his body and his pain.

Later still, she told him of the weight of SWS against her, the way she had been made to feel small. Critic trembled with rage at the thought of his sister reduced, made lesser and frail.

He had known anger before. At the forum trolls who plagued his website, at the laziness of filmmakers who subsisted clichés for plot. What he felt now eclipsed all that had come before.

He understood fury now, how hot it burned, scalding him black and cracking. He held Chick close, and that only made it worse, until finally he rose and fell to pacing.

When the intercom crackled and Linkara called, Critic was ready. He expected an argument, was ready for justifications and excuses, and Linakra did not disappoint.

Spoony at least had the grace to look guilty. There was much he wanted to say to the man, but the words were barbed and lodged deep in Critic's throat.

He wanted to remind Spoony of the chance he'd taken by hiring him. Remind him that long before Linkara came along it had been Critic who protected him, who let The Bum paw through his office and kept Lantern from assault charges.

He wanted to tell him he'd done it all because of the way Spoony looked him in the eye during his interview. The way he'd described his talent and baggage without drama, without apology, promising only what he knew he could give.

Under the panic in those eyes, Critic saw strength. Here was a fellow survivor, a man who had learned to stand tall when all the world wanted to pull him down. Spoony had warned him of the dangers, but Critic had put his faith in that strength, had trusted in Spoony not to hurt them.

He wanted to tell him how much it hurt, to be proven wrong.

Linkara said all the right words, but his own faith was suspect. He did not miss the way the man looked to the side when Critic spoke of lust and rage intertwined, the sudden slump of his shoulders when he surrendered to suspicion.

He'd intended from the start to let Linkara come and go from the bedroom, but he took his access first to prove that he could. So that Linkara might feel as powerless as his sister had, might know how it was to be vulnerable to another's whims.

Linkara took it as a threat when he offered to let them leave Molossia, but it was the only gift he had left to give them. Whatever his demons had driven him to, Spoony was still a friend.

There was danger in the barren lands, but there was also freedom. Sometimes Critic imagined how it would feel to simply walk away into the chill of the desert night.

The door closed behind Linkara and The Bum. Critic stood alone in the hall for a long moment, picturing it. A pack his only burden, his only responsibility to his own life and death.

'_You did what you had to do.' _

It didn't make it any easier.

* * *

><p>The next morning at breakfast, Critic was the only one to speak.<p>

He spared them nothing. All the lurid details came out, the way Chick had shivered through the night, the teethmarks at her breasts.

They shifted, unable to meet each other's eyes, cupping their palms over their own marks of passion.

"He's on lockdown until I say otherwise," Critic finished, "He'll eat in his room, but he'll need an escort for the bathroom."

When Linkara would have spoken,Critic shook his head, the implication clear.

Someone who could be trusted.

In the end, it was HandsomeTom who was chosen. And by extension 8 Bit Mickey, for where one went, the other followed. After the night's events they were the only two who sat close beside each other, perhaps closer than before, Mickey's lips swollen and curved in a secret little smile.

No one protested sealing Spoony away. Not even Benzaie, though Linkara kept looking to him with pleading eyes. But Critic also knew they assumed it was only temporary, just until Spoony found control.

Critic wished he could be sure.

Hadn't Linkara himself pointed out that Spoony had been getting better? What did better look like for a man like Spoony anyway? Perhaps what they had taken for improvement had been only the calm before the storm.

"Meeting dismissed," he said, and no one lingered over jello or proposed a game.

They fled, scattering down white corridors, first Linkara, at last even Chick, leaving Critic to sit alone.

* * *

><p>Linkara expected rapid-fire transformations, migraines, seizures. A return to the shattered man who flinched from even his touch.<p>

But Spoony settled into captivity with something too close to gratitude for comfort. His arms dropped to his sides. His shoulders pulled back. He stood taller, smiled easier.

There was a sense of solidity to Spoony now, as if he had grown in presence if not in size. There was a sweet ache in Linkara's chest to see him sprawled out across the bed, vulnerable and uncaring of it.

He'd always assumed Spoony carried himself as he did, curled over and drawn up, as defense against the world at large, which had so often proven itself a threatening place. But now, with only Linkara to bear witness, Spoony blossomed.

It was Linkara who chafed at confinement, mapping the width and length of their allotted space with his pacing. His own bedroom was no larger, but it was the door that made him shiver, the door which still opened at his touch but might not always do so.

When Spoony grew bored of his marching he pushed him out to wander the halls, displaying rather less sympathy than Linkara might have hoped. He greeted everyone he passed with giddy glee, but he could not have explained how the air outside the room tasted different, fresher.

Some two hours later he made his way back to the bedroom to find Spoony asleep at midday, lost in a slumber so deep it took Linkara ten minutes to rouse him.

It was days before Linkara left him again.

Boredom was the enemy in Molossia. Outside Spoony's cell the days drifted by, but there was relief to be had in conversations with friends, in D&D sessions that spanned weeks, in reviews grown ever more elaborate and grandiose

Left to his own devices, Spoony too easily gave in to the siren call of sleep. It kept Linkara close when the room felt tight across his shoulders. When he slept, Spoony was wide open, defenseless against attacks from within.

The other did visit, always in two or threes, doing their duty by pretending concern. Spoony was gracious, greeting them with a warmth they did not deserve.

But Linkara saw the way he folded over and closed up. He'd prided himself on how well he knew Spoony, but for all that he saw, he knew now that he understood little.

The hunched posture, the crossed arms…they were a snake's rattle, a way of protecting the others by reminding them to tread with care or risk a bite. It kept them from moving too quickly, touching too freely, a manufactured frailty to mask a dangerous strength.

He was different with Liz, but not in the same way he was different with Linkara. He feared that she would fear him, and so kept to corners and used Linkara as a buffer, a shield.

And Liz smiled as if she did not notice, and talked to him of the fox and her cubs, just now taking their first forays out of the den.

Linkara fell a little in love with her for that, but Liz shrugged when he tried to thank her. She'd only been talking to a friend, and since when did that warrant gratitude?

And he was different with Benzaie, as comfortable with the bear as he'd ever been. But Linkara glowered at him when he came, for Benzaie was no longer part of "us" but one of "them".

But Spoony expected no loyalty, accepting as he did that his own memories were somehow flawed. Betrayal was not betrayal when it was justified, and Spoony had committed a crime so heinous he would not have been able to accept forgiveness had it had been offered.

He would not let Linkara tell him it wasn't his fault, but Linkara was allowed to hold him when the guilt crept in, was allowed sleep beside him on the narrow mattress to soothe him through the night. He seemed to have accepted that his alters would not hurt him, even if they came when his control was at its weakest.

And come they did.

A week had passed since Critic shut the door on Spoony, and Linkara had not slept the night through. Even Insano had taken his turn, and Linkara could remember only a few occasions when the white-coated alter had risen from Spoony's dreams.

But it was worth the rude awakenings to have Spoony safe in his arms. Linkara's favorite time was in the drowsy dark, those hazy moments just before sleep took them both.

It was then that he was allowed to kiss Spoony.

Slow, lazy kisses, a gentle exploration of each other's mouths. Linkara knew the other man was far from inexperienced, but there was something tentative about the press of his lips and slid of his tongue.

Now he almost laughed, realizing suddenly why Insano had come out to play.

Would have laughed, if there had been anything funny about Spoony treated a kiss as an experiment, comparing and contrasting it to all that had come before.

What he knew of this would have been the clash of a stranger's teeth against his own, or worse yet the yielding embrace of his mother. The thought filled Linkara with a strange, hard-edged tenderness, made him soften his kisses to a fluttering touch.

He drifted to sleep between kisses, and woke later to a worried voice calling his name.

Linkara reached for The Bum and pulled him down, tucking his head under his chin and patting his back with a clumsiness born of exhaustion.

"I'm here. Go to sleep," he ordered, his Minnesotan accent thickened to a drawl that sounded foreign to his own ears. "I got ya, babe."

"Not your babe," Spoony said.

In Molossia the lights were always burning, but past midnight they dimmed to a soft glow. Linkara blinked against it and released his hold on Spoony, but the man stayed close, warm and heavy against him.

"What's wrong?"

Spoony jolted forward to hide his face against Linkara's shoulder, and Linkara had to look twice to be sure it wasn't The Bum after all. "Bad dream?" he guessed.

But Spoony shook his head, huffing out a laugh against Linkara's skin. "I thought I…I was going to…"

He shook his head again, this time in frustration, and Linkara hummed an idle tune as he rubbed the other man's back and waited for him to calm.

"Better?" he asked, when Spoony's breathing had slowed and his shaking had faded to a fine tremor.

And then Spoony was rearing up, capturing Linkara's mouth in a kiss with nothing tentative about it.

Linkara groaned when they parted, but again Spoony didn't go far. He spoke in a whisper that brushed their lips together, more intimate somehow then that wet and messy kiss.

"Linkara? I'm asking."


	19. Chapter 19

_'Linkara? I'm asking.'_

"Yes. Yes, yes, yes…"

It was a chant, just as Linkara had only a week ago chanted the opposite to SWS. But there was no desperation in it now, just laughter bubbling up rich and easy between the words.

"Yes, you idiot, yes!"

Spoony laughed at his laughter and took his mouth again. It was slick and hot and perfect, and Linkara had never been so hard or so terrified.

"Yes," he said again when Spoony pulled back, a whisper now, "But you have to be sure."

"I'm not," Spoony said, "But I want to try. I just need…you have to…"

He gestured, a flap of the wrist that signified nothing. Linkara nodded anyway.

"I know," he said, and he did, "I've got you, sweetheart."

Spoony huffed and butted their foreheads together, soothing the mild sting of it with another kiss. "Not your sweetheart."

"Baby? Darling? Honeycakes?"

It earned him a smack, but Spoony was smiling, ducking his head to hide his blush. "No?" Linkara asked, "What can I call you then?"

That silence that followed stretched on too long. Linkara understood suddenly how a heart could sink, feeling his own plummet down with such speed it took his breath with it.

"I was only joking," he said, thinking of how a mother might use a pet name for her son, despairing that already he had roused some memory better left forgotten.

But Spoony raised his head to look him in the eye, and gave the answer in a whisper so frail it took Linkara a few seconds to be sure of what he'd heard.

"Noah."

Oh.

_Oh. _

"Noah." Linkara repeated the name with the reverence it deserved, rolling it across his tongue and tasting the weight of it.

How long had it been, since they'd been anything but Linkara and Spoony? Their internet personas had become their identities, as they had for everyone at Channel Awesome, a reimagining of the self as someone effortlessly clever.

"Lewis," he gave in return, and was surprised it came so easy. "Call me Lewis, Noah."

And they were kissing again, too fevered to make a good job of it. Linkara pressed closer, nuzzling against Spoony's chin and nipping at the strong line of his jaw.

Spoony froze.

Went tight, pulling in on himself without moving away. Linkara jerked back so quickly he almost tumbled from the narrow bed, saving himself by gripping the sheets.

"I'm sorry," they said together.

Linkara glared at Spoony for daring to apologize. "Not your fault," he said, "We just have to take it slow. I'll ask, but you have to answer."

He spoke firmly, as he might to The Bum. Waited for Spoony to nod before kissing him again, this time on the lips, telegraphing his intentions by stroking his jaw with his thumb.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Okay." Spoony tipped his head to make it easier, eyes fluttering shut at this new touch.

Linkara would ask the same question many times through the night. He took nothing for granted, knowing that to rush would be to bully, and wanting better than that for them both.

"Okay?"

Settling his hand over Spoony's heart.

"Okay?"

Rubbing over the covered peak of the other man's nipple with the pads of his fingers, feeling it stiffen and swell.

"Okay?"

Easing his hands under the t-shirt to stroke Spoony's sides, finding the spots that made him gasp and giggle.

"Okay?"

Pulling that shirt finally up and off, flinging it away to puddle lonely in the corner.

Linkara stopped then, took a minute to look his fill. Spoony was pale against the shadows, shoulders twitching as he fought the urge to cross his arms over his chest.

"Not much to look at."

"Shut up," Linkara told him, "You're beautiful."

And god, he was, hairy and soft and going a bit paunchy around the middle.

"Still not a girl," Spoony growled, but his eyes were bright, and he pulled Linkara down and threw back his head in invitation.

Linakra took it, nibbling gentle at the tender skin of his throat and relishing his groans.

"Yeah, still got that." Linkara worked his way down, still stopping every inch or so to be sure of his welcome. He found a nipple and blew across it in warning, grinning when Spoony yelped.

"Okay?"

"Stop and I will fucking kill you, you bastard."

But Spoony gasped when Linkara licked over that little nub of flesh, body rising in a violent arch that suggested more panic than pleasure. Linkara fumbled for his hand, let Spoony grind their fingers together with a crushing grip.

"Spoony…Noah. Feel that? That's me. That's you."

And slowly Spoony settled, breathing out a long, shuddering sigh. "Yeah," he whispered, "Yeah, okay."

Something told Linkara not to bite down. He settled for gentle sucking, hands rubbing calming circles across the furred chest, smiling at the wet gleam he left behind.

He kissed his way down further and felt the scar before he saw it, a sudden roughness against his lips.

There were smaller marks scattered across Spoony's skin. Ritual burns like puckered starbursts. A dip under his collarbone where he'd scraped away the birthmark that had singled him out for sacrifice. Everywhere the long lines where the whip had bitten deep, a gridline of suffering.

But the flesh around his navel was a ruin, rucked up in places, stretched taunt in others.

It would have been easier in a way if Linkara hadn't known the source of that terrible scar. He could have pretended it was the remnants of some childhood mishap; the sort of thing an adventurous child might do with a tree and a fence post.

Spoony had never been close-mouthed about his past, but this Linkara only knew because he'd done his research. Sites like the Smoking Gun had provided the police reports, terse words that only made the horror that much greater.

_Located in the basement adjunct to the graveyard was a constructed room. Suspect 24 was located inside this room. Estimated age 8 years. Suspect 24 was agitated and refused orders to put down his weapon. Pepper spray was necessary to subdue the suspect. EMS on scene observed a large wound in the suspect's abdomen that that appeared to be the result of an infected navel piercing. Suspect 24 was transported to Jefferson Hospital for treatment._

It went on from there, a concise reporting of the facts. Twenty-three dead cultists. Four injured officers.

And one newly made orphan who needed skin grafts to close the festering hole in his gut.

Linkara had always had an active imagination, and it had been all too willing to fill in the gaps between the words. A boy with Spoony's thick hair, sick with rot, huddled in the dark and listening to his family fight and die.

Holding a gun too heavy for his hand, the recoil knocking him flat.

Screaming when the fire lanced his eyes.

"Lewis?"

"I'm sorry," Linkara said, both for his tears and for all that lost little boy had endured. "I'm so sorry, Noah."

He kissed the scar, laved its contours with his tongue, trying to show the crumpled skin all the kindness owed to it.

"Lewis!"

The name sounded like it had been punched out of him, a rumbling groan like SWS at his most sensual and depraved, but sexier by far because it was **Spoony**.

Linkara knew because he checked, resting his cheek against the soft swell of Spoony's belly so he could look up into cobalt eyes.

"You're beautiful," he said again, because now he **could**. "You have no idea the things you do to me."

"You have no idea…" Spoony answered, and it was adorable how his voice rose when he rolled his eyes, "…how much you sound like every cheesy romance movie ever made."

Linkara retaliated by giving his full attention to the scar, licking at it until Spoony's head dropped back and his hands pulled at the sheets.

'_Found a way to shut him up,'_ Linkara thought, and grinned.

Under Spoony's navel started a trail of dark, wiry hair that disappeared under the waistband of his boxers. Linkara moved to mouth at it…

Spoony didn't tense. He didn't kick out, or shove Linkara away. But he clenched the sheets that much tighter. Swallowed deep, and there was something in the bop of his throat that spoke to Linkara of submission.

"Okay?" Linkara asked, and prayed Spoony would have the courage to give him the right answer.

There was a long tense moment of silence. When Spoony finally did speak his voice was thickened by shame, stripping the single word he spoke of any resolve.

"No."

Linkara closed his eyes, in relief, in gratitude. He wanted to praise Spoony for his bravery. Wanted to thank him for this gift of trust, for believing in Linkara enough to know he would listen.

But his chest was too tight, any words he'd might have spoken too small for the task. Instead he slid from the bed. Stood, and tugged Spoony up after.

Spoony came without compliment or question, Too late Linkara saw the fear in his eyes, the creeping sadness that made him sigh quiet and low.

"No, sweetheart, no," Linkara whispered, not caring in the least if the endearment made Spoony bristle, "Just want to try something new."

He stripped off his own shirt with no thought to seduction, wanting only that they should be equally exposed.

Lay flat on his back on the strip of a mattress. Bent one leg at the knee. Stretched his arms open wide in welcome.

"Come here, Noah."

He hoped Spoony understood the offer. Linkara didn't know how to explain without resorting words like 'straddle' and 'spread', words that Spoony might have heard in another place, another context.

Then he was blanketed in warmth. Spoony buried his face against Linkara's neck, curling his arms around him in a desperate clutch. The hard length of him rode Linkara's thigh, a point of higher heat even through the boxers.

Linkara stroked his back, whispered in his ear, but otherwise lay still. To do otherwise would risk spooking the other man, and this was for Spoony. Holding him while he came apart was more than enough for Linkara.

Or so he told himself.

But Spoony was making the most delicious little noises in his chest, snuffling grunts and stifled moans. His thrusts came slow and hesitant, and Linkara let his hands drift to the other man's hips, guiding him into a smoother rhythm.

"I've got you," he promised, "Not going **anywhere**."

Spoony groaned deep at that. Pressed his lips to Linkara's throat, catching the sensitive skin between his teeth, a hard sharp pinch that was over before he could wince.

"Can I?" he asked, "I want them to know, Lewis, want them to **see**…"

Linkara's hands tightened down, thumbs rubbing over the hard points of Spoony's hipbones. "Yes," he hissed, not an agreement but a demand, "Do it."

Spoony's mouth settled over Linkara's pulse. He sucked hard, humming in concentration. Linkara raised a hand to tangle it in the dark hair, pressing the other man closer, feeling himself bruising and wanting **more**.

When he was done Spoony rubbed his fingers over the mark, his smile feral and well satisfied.

Linkara dipped his head to lick under the point of Spoony's jaw, savoring the oily taste of his sweat.

"Okay?"

If Spoony had refused him Linkara felt sure he would have either wept or exploded. But he only lifted his chin, growling like Lantern when Linkara fastened on.

He sucked sloppy and reckless, pushing up with his thigh when Spoony's thrusts started to stutter.

It wasn't enough to mark him once. Linkara sucked a line down the long neck, wanting there to be no mistake that Spoony was **his**. He leaned back at last to admire the blossoming stains of red, then gave in to temptation and scraped his teeth against the brightest of them.

Spoony bucked down hard with a startled cry. Linkara held him close, gentled him through it with tiny kisses and whispered comfort.

"**Oh**," Spoony said when he could breathe again, and he sounded so shocked that Linkara couldn't help but laugh.

"That's about right," he said, and shoved at the other man's shoulder. "Shift over."

Spoony obligingly wiggled over enough to free Linkara of his weight. It wasn't until he stood that Spoony startled out of his half doze and reached for him.

"Where are you…"

Linkara caught his hand and pressed a kiss to his wrist. "Going to step out for a minute or two," he said, "But I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere."

Spoony's confusion became amusement and pride when he noticed the bulge in Linkara's boxers. "I could…"

He made a crude motion with his fist. Linkara bent down to claim a proper kiss, dodging back when Spoony would have taken the matter in hand.

"Another time," he said, "Just don't fall asleep before I get back."

Linkara knew the offer had been genuine enough. But he also knew Spoony wasn't ready, and the way he managed only a token protest before settling back against the pillow only confirmed it.

Linkara would be damned if they ended the night with fear.

This late he met no one in the halls, a good thing since he hadn't thought to cover himself with a robe. He didn't quite run to the bathroom, but only because walking was awkward enough in his condition.

In the privacy to a stall he took care of himself with a half dozen brutally efficient strokes, the fingers of his free hand pressed to the still slick mark at his throat.

When he returned to the bedroom Spoony smiled at him with such open delight that Linkara knew he hadn't been sure of his return. He slapped him for that, ghosting his palm up the back of his head before kissing him deep as proof there was nowhere else Linkara wanted to be.

They shuffled around until they lay on their sides, Linkara's back to Spoony's chest.

'_Nowhere else.' _

Lips brushed his neck, lingering over the smudge of ruddy color that in the morning would be a darkening bruise. Linkara purred his pleasure and closed his eyes.

"Mine," Spoony said into his ear, and Linkara had never heard him sound so confident, so sure.

He reached back to find Spoony's hand, dragging his arm across Linkara's side to anchor them both.

"Mine?" he asked.

"Don't be silly," Spoony said, but his tone implied he meant _'don't be a fucking idiot_.' "Didn't you know that already?"

"Yeah," Linkara said, "I guess maybe I did."


	20. Chapter 20

Spoony was full.

Sated, here in the dark with his (**his**!) man in his arms.

He had lived so long with hunger that the lack of it felt daunting. Here was a moment where there was nothing for Black Lantern to defend against, nothing for The Bum to seek protection from. SWS was content, and Insano had learned something new.

He breathed in deep, stuffed himself with the taste and shape and smell of Linkara, until he felt fat and lazy with it, whatever it was they were building between them.

Linkara's head was heavy on his arm, the limb going slowly numb. But the pain was vague and perfect, grounding him in the here and now. He could remember the touch of lips against his belly and the tease of nails down his back and think only _Lewis_.

But still he could not help but feel uneasy. He knew how to kiss, how to tease and please. Linkara had made it different, made it new, but even so, it was all so familiar.

What he didn't know, what he hoped to learn, was what came next.

* * *

><p>Critic begged. He cursed and pleaded, bargained and threatened.<p>

"Tell me I fucked up. Tell me I was wrong."

But Ma-Ti only stood there, arms crossed, a smirk teasing the corners of his lips. Watching Critic with eyes that held kindness and deep pity.

In life, Ma-Ti had never been shy about letting Critic know when he was disappointed. While his fans flattered and his employees brown nosed in hopes of a bonus, Ma-Ti despaired at his stupidity. Laughed at him for thinking internet fame translated into the real world. Called him out for a narcissist with delusions of grandeur.

"Tell me the truth."

And still Ma-Ti would not speak to him.

"Bad night?"

Critic answered with a groan. He turned to look at Snob slowly, careful of his head, which felt too big and unwieldy for his neck.

"Feels like a hangover," he said and groaned again, remembering one of the great pleasures of life before the Fall. "I need a fucking drink."

"I hear ya, man. I'd give my left nut for a Red Bull."

"But at least we have coffee," they chorused together. Snob held up his mug in salute, sipping the black swill that bore only a passing resemblance to that nectar of the gods.

Snob craned his head for a peek at the paperwork spread out in front of Critic, only to wince and look away when he recognized it for what it was. "Chick said you were having trouble sleeping again," he said, as if the change of subject was any less grim.

'_Did she tell you I sweat so much we have to change the sheets? Or that I wake up with my nose smashed against the ceiling?'_

Critic rubbed the bruise now and shrugged.

"Of course I am. It was the right thing to do, but it wasn't **easy**."

But Snob, the little fucker, didn't agree or disagree. Just sipped his drink, and it must be damn nice not to have an opinion.

"Don't fucking judge me." It was tempting to throw his own mug, to let it crash against the wall and fall to pieces, but Critic settled for slamming it down on the table. "I get enough of that shit from Ma-Ti."

"Don't," he said when Snob would have apologized, or questioned, or soothed. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. This has been a rough week, for everyone. I just need some time alone."

Snob left, but not without glancing back over his shoulder. Critic didn't try for a reassuring smile, but he lightened his frown, did his best to look pensive instead of infuriated.

He looked down at the watch schedule, a tidy list of names and times. It should have been altered a week ago, Spoony's name struck out, the holes filled in. But he would remember Spoony's smile, his pride at being of worth, at having use, and his courage would fail him.

Now Critic picked up his pen and went to work.

* * *

><p>There was a bulletin board in the mess. Messages scrawled out messy and tilting, passive aggressive reminders taken to an art form.<p>

'_Clean up your dishes. Your mother doesn't live here.' _

'_My mom is dead. Thanks for the reminder, jerk.' _

'_ALL our moms are dead. Rinse your goddamned plate.' _

Critic pinned the new watch schedule up between the Magic tournament standings and the list of songs Paw wasn't allowed to sing on penalty of death. He felt better for it when it was done, as if he'd torn off a Band-aid with a final fast jerk after days of worrying at its edges.

"Punish me," he said to Chick that night. She did, and he felt better for that too, cleansed of some measure of his guilt.

"I'm worried about Linkara," she said later, and Critic laughed, because who wasn't?

But he knew she didn't mean the way he sat apart at dinner, the way he hovered when Spoony was escorted to the bathroom and back.

She meant the way he looked for allies. Separating the others from the herd like weak deer, whispering to them in corners of loyalty and second chances.

"Spoony is his friend," Critic said, though of course that was only half of it. It been almost obnoxious, how badly Linkara wanted people to take notice of the bruise at his throat. It was fading now to a bare hint of yellow, and still he held conversations with his head tipped just so, mindful of the fall of light.

Once Critic would have been happy for him. Happy for them both. But Linkara wore that bruise like it meant something. Exhibit A, proof that Spoony was on the path to healing, and someday might be cured.

All that, from a goddamned hickey.

"I know," Chick said, "I know he's angry and scared. But he has to understand that this is for everyone's protection, including Spoony's."

Because if SWS had gotten his way, Critic would have killed him. Then and there, without remorse.

He wondered, if SWS died, would it be Spoony they buried?

"Give him time." It was a poor solution, but Critic had nothing better to offer. In some thin way he understood the confusion Linkara must feel. He knew how it was, to love someone with darkness in them.

But Chick had never pressed someone weaker against a wall, never used a knee to open trembling thighs, never threatened violence if refused.

"If you want him gone, he's gone."

It wasn't the first time he'd made the offer. And Chick sighed and kissed him, as she always did, and laid her head down on his chest.

"I want to hate him, but I can't. Spoony's a victim too."

But somehow it didn't seem like that should matter.

He traced the line of her back with his fingers, felt her shiver and stretch into it like a pampered cat. It struck him all over again how small she was, and he hated that SWS had given him that thought. His sister had always been the biggest thing in his world.

"There might be a solution," she said, "To the Linkara issue. If we had other people here, who didn't know Spoony…"

She peeked up at him through her lashes, checking if he was already with her or still needed persuading.

And there she was again, his larger than life twin. He laughed, jostling her where she lay against him, and tugged at her hair.

"Go on," he said, "I'm interesting to see where this is going."

"We've tried so hard with Spoony for so long…it's only natural to want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But a stranger is going to worry about their own safety first.

"That's why Linkara is so against bringing in outsiders. He knows that anyone who wasn't already friends with Spoony wouldn't tolerate SWS or Insano roaming around."

It was distracting, the way she was playing with his nipple and plucking his chest hairs, but Critic knew it was meant to be. "Expect Spoony is already on lockdown," he said, "And I think Linkara is more concerned about dying horribly because we advertised our location to every raider in the state."

Chick slid her hand down lower. Critic rolled away to sit on the edge of the bed, bundling the blankets around his waist for protection.

His sister had an impressive pout, all soft lower lip and bedroom eyes. "Yes, and for now they'll obey the rules to the letter. But in a few months? They're going to slip, because it's not some random prisoner…it's **Spoony**."

This was Chick's secret, why so many played her games without knowing it. She knew how to use the truth, how to carve and scrape it into a lacework design.

Critic could see it. Tom turning his back just long enough for Lantern to slip away. Film Brain visiting Spoony alone and falling under SWS' sway. Linkara convincing Mickey that a walk through the halls would soothe The Bum, as a car ride does a colicky child.

But he saw too the man he had given to the coyotes. Baugh's skull exploding into a froth of blood and bone. Ma-Ti.

"You have to let it go," Chick said, and he wondered if he had spoken the name aloud, or if she could see Ma-Ti's face in his eyes. "He can't haunt you forever."

Oh, but he fucking **could**.

Chick crept closer. Draped herself again his back, weight teasing the marks her nails had left behind. "You said once that the more people we surrounded ourselves with, the safer we'd be. What's changed?"

'_I was younger then_,' he might have told her, '_I thought it was just the bad men we needed to be afraid of. But the good men are so much worse, because we find ways to justify the things we do.'_

"I'll think about it."

No idle promise, this. Chick would hold him to it, would expect daily updates and lists of pro and cons. But for now, it granted him a badly needed reprieve.

He was just so very tired.


	21. Chapter 21

Linkara found his ally in the last person he would have expected.

It was Snob who came to him, waiting inside Linkara's bedroom for a chance to catch him alone. A dark man-shape with bowed head, sitting there in the dim, too lonely a sight to register as a threat for more than a passing second or two.

Close to two weeks had passed since Critic locked Spoony away, and in those days Linkara had found little reason to speak with Snob. Next to Chick he was the closest of them all to Critic, and that made him the friend of an enemy.

But Snob was earnest when he spoke of Critic's bloodshot eyes and shaking hands, painfully so. "Chick is worried, Linkara, and so am I."

"So he feels guilty. He **should** feel guilty."

But for what, exactly? For defending his sister from a predator? For caging that predator to keep the others safe?

Snob said nothing, letting Linkara work through it on his own. But Linkara needed to hold onto his anger, needed to blame Critic so he wouldn't have to blame Spoony.

"She gave him a pill, for his migraine. It wasn't…it wasn't **him**. Even Chick said she doesn't blame him."

"It isn't about blame, Linkara," Snob said, "Next time, it might not be a pill. Just a bad day, too much stress, an argument that got out of hand…it's not a punishment. Spoony understands why it has to be this way. Why can't you?"

_Because Spoony tried to kill himself, when he realized what the Change had done, what it meant. Tried to hang himself, tried to take a knife to his own throat. He said Chick didn't say no, and a man willing to die to keep his friends safe isn't a man who would lie about that._

_Because I trust him._

But could he afford to? And did he really, when he still remembered that glimpse of Lantern's eyes in The Bum's face?

"What do you want, Snob?" Linkara asked, weary now with the conversation, with his own spinning thoughts, which went round and round, never settling, never stopping, and did Snob think Critic was the only one losing sleep?

"Lay off Critic. He's doing the best he can."

If Snob had demanded it, if there had been anger in his voice, anything less than pity in his eyes, Linkara would have refused out of hand.

But he only sounded sad. He sounded like a man who could do nothing but watch while a friend suffered, and Linkara knew how it felt to be helpless, knew how it scraped at the soul and left it aching.

"I know he is," Linkara said, almost gently, "But you told me yourself that he cries in his sleep, that he wakes up screaming…this is the person we're letting making decisions for us."

"We're not **letting** him." Now the anger was there, Snob's voice thickening to a bitter snarl. "We're **making** him, and then we're bitching about it when he gets shit done."

But he couldn't quite meet Linkara's eyes, and there had been a flash of something in his own, something like…

Fear?

Snob stood and started to pace, sharp strides that never carried him more than three steps in either direction. '_What is it?_' Linkara wanted to ask, but Snob spoke again before he could, biting the words from the air.

"He told me Ma-Ti was judging him. Like it was nothing, like it's **normal **to have a dead guy looking over your shoulder."

Snob's pacing slowed, became more of a meandering across the room. Linkara caught him by the shoulder, held him steady until he blew out a shuddering sigh.

"When did it all go wrong, Linkara?" Snob whispered.

It was a childish question, no different than asking why a loving god would let bad things happen to good people. The kind of question that had no answer.

Expect this time it did.

A green blast, a red splatter. A successful invasion, and afterward they'd been too busy wallowing in grief to leave Critic room for his own. They'd left it to him to keep them organized and motivated, to get shit **done**. While Linkara whispered apologies to a teddy bear and thought himself unique in his pain, while he cried on Spoony's shoulder and never once wondered if Critic needed to cry on his.

"You're right," Linkara told Snob, "We made him take on both the choices and the consequences alone, and that's not fair."

"So you'll lay off? Stop badgering him to let Spoony out and treating him like a dick when he won't?

Linkara couldn't quite go that far. Critic was doing the best he could, of that he had no doubt, but that didn't mean he couldn't get things **wrong**.

But he could thank him, for Molossia. For food on the table, and the turrets that protected them. For murder committed in their name.

He could remember that before Critic had become the enemy, he had been a friend. He could prove that he would be there to help when it counted, and perhaps in doing so earn Spoony his freedom.

* * *

><p>Things didn't get easier when Linkara stopped his bitching and moaning, just quieter.<p>

Because Critic didn't trust this sudden surrender to the way of the world. Not from Linkara, who loved most the comic books where the bad guys lost and the good guys won, who preferred black and white to shades of gray.

Oh, he still advocated for Spoony's release, arguing with no less passion but perhaps a little less heat. But he no longer pestered Critic like a child denied a favored toy, no longer tried to make it **personal**.

It made him nervous, when Linkara passed him by without a sneer. Downright jittery when he was allowed to visit Spoony without Linkara skulking about the room like he could immolate Critic if he only glowered hard enough.

Suspicious, when he came upon Linkara and Snob talking in low, solemn tones.

It was the way they looked at him with narrowed eyes, the way the conversation stopped cold when he entered the room.

Guilty as fuck, but of what?

Pondering the question gave Critic a new reason to toss and turn through the night. Until at last Chick gave up and tied him to the bedposts so that she, at least, could get some sleep. Critic did not begrudge her the rest, but he envied it.

The solution came to him while he lay there, staring up at the ceiling and trying not to rub his wrists raw. Not an answer, but a way to find the answer.

If Linkara had found his ally, then Critic needed a spy.

* * *

><p>"I want to see Spoony."<p>

Linkara blinked.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he told Chick.

Chick slid down the wall to sit as they did, crossed legged with her back against the tiles. Magic cards lay strewn before them, the bulk of them hand-drawn with varying degrees of skill.

A charcoal luck dragon with a windblown mane flying above an angry sea. The Liefeld, a monstrosity crippled by its twisted spine and bulging muscles. A stick figure Jedi wielding the Master Sword.

"I just want to say I'm sorry. For setting off the alarm, you know. And giving him that pill. I want him to know I don't hate him."

"He knows," Linkara said.

Chick's giggle was high-pitched, but the sound held no mockery. "I'm sure you told him, but do you think he believed it?"

She took Linkara's hand when he was slow to answer, smiling at him with such sympathy it made his eyes burn. "Just ask if it would be okay. If he says no, that's fine. I don't want to hurt him, Linkara, I promise."

He looked down at her hand, so much smaller than his own. It was a woman's hand, pale and finely formed, her filed nails a phantom pressure against his palm.

And he thought of the crescent moon scars scattered across Spoony's shoulders, still raw, still healing. The scars he had kissed, as if in benediction, when they alone of all the marks on Spoony's skin had been earned.

"I'll ask him," he said, "I'm sure he'll want to see you. It makes him sick to think of what could have happened."

There was an awkward stretch of silence. Linkara played a card, but the game had been a prop to begin with, and they'd long ago lost track of who was winning.

It was too risky to meet in the bedroom. It was more Benzaie's than Linkara's now that his things had almost finished their slow migration to Spoony's bureau. And Snob shared his own with Jew Wario, whose insistence on jumping at shadows tired the man out enough to have him sleeping half the day away.

Though risky implied they were doing something **wrong**, and if anything they were trying to make things **right**. Trying to find ways to ease the burden on Critic, to take the stoop from his shoulders and return the smile to his face.

They'd tried talking to the others, but none of them would admit that Critic had changed since they took Molossia. To admit to it would mean standing on their own, and it was easier to let Critic bear their weight.

"How is he?" Snob asked Chick now, because she at least had no illusions about her twin.

"Tired," she said, as she always did, 'And fussing because you're being **nice** to him."

She smirked at Linkara, and how was it that she didn't blame him for blaming Critic?

The smirk faded, and Chick sighed. Picked up a card and flipped it between her fingers, looking at it to avoid look at them.

"Last night he told me he was thinking of going back for Ma-Ti."

They shuddered, because it was too easy to picture. Critic digging down into the dirt. Cradling the femur, the grinning skull. The very idea was repugnant. **Hurtful**, in some strange way, an insult to Ma-Ti's memory.

"Look…" Snob was obviously looking for some way to make it sound better, to make it sound less **crazy**. But he trailed off, shaking his head and throwing up his hands in defeat. "No, that's just ass creepy."

"I think I talked him out of it," Chick said, "I **hope** I did."

She threw down the card she'd been fiddling with. A lopsided shape in Crayola crimson, fat curves tapering down to a triangle point. The label drawn jagged and high, the exclamation point like a wound dripping blood.

Heart! 


	22. Chapter 22

It had been so much easier when Spoony couldn't remember the things that he did.

He'd just gone away. Gone inside, where it was safe and dark and comforting. When he woke up there would be apologies to give, messes to tidy, but he wouldn't have to dwell on the details.

And then the Fall came, and Change along with it, and he'd lost that little haven tucked away inside his own head. The first transformation after, when The Bum had run sniveling to Linkra like a beaten cur…

Spoony still hadn't been able to feel what The Bum felt, the neediness, the fear. That was why the alters existed in the first place, to feel the emotions Spoony had given up to survive.

But he'd had to watch while the alter **pawed** at Linkara, all but climbing into his lap, demanding comfort like a spoiled brat of a child.

He'd been them all that day. SWS, Lantern, Insano. But he'd hated The Bum the most, with his whining, his refusal to see the others were just as shaken. Until that day, even with his "issues", his pills and therapy sessions and government checks, Spoony had thought of himself as strong.

The Bum had shown him the bitter truth.

He was a fucking coward.

Afraid of fear, afraid of pleasure, afraid of anger. He couldn't even trust himself to be as smart as he was. He always had to take things too far, didn't he, always had to push the limits of science until someone got **hurt**.

The alters were the strong ones, and he didn't know want that made him, what it left him.

And now, to learn he'd made up memories like he'd made up his phantom selves, to know himself not just a coward but a **liar**…

"I'm so sorry," he said again to Chick, because there was nothing else **to** say.

"I forgive you."

It might have meant something if Chick hadn't kept one hand on the door, if her other hand hadn't rested on the pistol at her hip.

Maybe she **had** forgiven, but she hadn't **forgotten**.

"I know better than to give you a ibuprofen like that," Chick went on, "I just couldn't take watching you in so much pain."

Ibuprofen? Was that all it took to turn his demons loose?

A fucking Motrin?

"**Don't**," Spoony said, "Don't you dare make this your fault."

"It's not yours," Chick shot back, "You're…"

_Damaged._

_Broken. _

Chick flushed, but it wasn't as if Spoony didn't know what he was. He'd carried those words all his life, would have been adrift without the weight of them.

"We can argue about this all day. It won't change that I forgive you."

"And it won't change that I'm stuck in this room."

It wasn't meant as an attack on Critic, but Chick took it that way. Spoony could see the hurt in her eyes, so quickly overcome by anger, and held up a hand to save her the trouble of a rebuttal.

"That's not my point," he said, "At the end of the day, I'm the one who couldn't keep it in my pants. That's not your fault, and even if it isn't mine either, we can't let it happen again. I'm with Critic on that."

And if that meant this room, these walls, then Spoony would have to, quite literally, live with it.

Linkara had been doing his best to let Chick and Spoony talk without interference, but now he made a low noise in the back of his throat. Spoony felt a sudden wave of affection for him, this man who would defend him despite his own doubts.

Chick had found her smile again, though she couldn't quite manage perky and had to settle for playful instead. "Aaand I still forgive you. It might not change things, but it **does** matter."

"Spoony."

He hadn't realized he'd clenched his fists until Linkara called his name. His tone was mild, but there a warning there, an underlying tsk tsk that helped Spoony push Lantern down before he could rise.

He wasn't quite sure why he was angry, why he wanted to shake Chick until that smile fell away. "Look, I understand what you're trying to do," he told her, "But I…"

_Say it. Say it, you fucking __**coward**__!_

"I tried to **rape** you. That's not…that's not **forgivable**."

And now he wasn't quite sure why he was crying. He'd only done it once before, and the whole thing felt unnatural, like he didn't quite have the knack of it. Didn't know how to cope with the general leaking, the hiccuping pain in his chest.

Chick looked over his head to Linkara, and he must have nodded, must have given her the go ahead to approach. And that was courage, how she didn't even hesitate before pulling him in and drawing his head down to her breast.

"But I do," she whispered, "I do forgive you. You don't get to decide that."

She rocked him until he'd cried himself out, then passed him off to Linkara. Left without another word, because she'd said where she came there to say.

Spoony let Linkara clean him up and lay him down, but he gathered his own courage when Linkara would have joined him on the bed.

"I need to sleep alone."

Linkara froze, already halfway under the sheets. Then he kissed Spoony, a lover's kiss, deep and wet and scorching.

"One night. I'll give you one night to feel sorry for yourself, to make this all about **you**, but that's it. Deal?"

Spoony should have refused. Being alone, with only his own thoughts, his own selves, was the worst punishment he could devise. He didn't deserve Linkara, and having him felt like he was being rewarded for his crime.

But Linkara kissed him again, and Spoony found being a coward had its perks.

"Deal."

* * *

><p>Linkara couldn't go to his own bedroom. He could try to sneak in quietly, but Benzaie would smell him even if he didn't hear him. Linkara couldn't face his questions, his concern.<p>

He wandered about for a bit, but all halls in Molossia lead to the mess. And there was Liz, drumming her fingers on the tabletop with an air of terminal boredom.

There was a pad and a pen before her, but the writing on the paper was sparse. "Midway?" Linkara asked her, and Liz picked up her pen only to throw it down.

"Designing an RPG isn't as easy as you would think. It's not the world building, it's the rules. Lovecraftian physics sound cool, but you try making a table for stabbing **through** corners."

She'd been working on it with Spoony for weeks, creating a mythos of juggling cthulhus and sideshow dwarfs without beards. They were all a bit tired of D&D, having already run through every scenario possible with treacherous kings seeking ancient relics.

Linkara watched her doodle for a few minutes, sketching out melting curves and foreshortened walls. "I liked your review last night," he offered, "But you sounded a bit nervous."

"I don't know why," Liz said, "It's not like there's an audience."

It wasn't something anyone else would have admitted, but Linkara forgave it. Liz couldn't understand how precious the illusion of listeners was to the rest of them, how it helped them pretend they still had a place in the world.

Another little silence, but it wasn't the uncomfortable sort that Linkara suffered through so often these days, with Critic, with Benzaie. It was closer to the silences he fell into with Spoony at times, when the words ran out but the warmth remained.

And that made him think of Spoony, lonely in his room. Stewing in his loneliness, relishing it, like that did anyone any good.

"Penny for your thoughts," Liz said, and produced one from her pocket. "I'll need it back though."

She gazed at him with such concern that Linkara had to wonder just how wrecked he looked. It had broken him, to see Spoony broken. Hurt him in some deep down place that still felt raw and tender.

"You know…" Linkara waved a hand, encompassing the entirely of the whole sorry situation, "It's just hard."

He didn't even have his armor of anger anymore, not when Chick had been so **kind** to Spoony. He hadn't known she had the empathy for it, with her empty eyes and emptier smiles.

Liz didn't try to tell him things would get better. Didn't ask if there was anything she could do, as if the answer could be anything other than turn back time. Didn't insist that Critic was doing his best in a bad situation.

She just hummed in agreement, and handed him the pad.

"Here," she said, flipping it back a few pages to a dense crowd of notes. "See if you can make a character from this."

Linkara rolled a D10 to determine his golem trapeze artist's dexterity score and looked at the resulting number rather mournfully. "That's going to be bad news for anyone down below."

"No, a two is good. It makes him interesting," Liz said, "He must be bolder than then the rest to get up there."

She dodged when Linkara tried to swat her, fending him off with jabs of her pen.

"That was awful," Linkara groaned, "That was a **crime**. I gravel before your skills."

"Oh," Liz said, and her mock glare was only a little less impressive than the real thing. "Oh, it's **on**. And trust me, boy, I fight dirty."


	23. Chapter 23

His spy did a better job than Critic could have hoped.

Jew Wario would have been the logical choice, had he only been made of sturdier stuff. The burden of choosing a side would have simply shattered the man. Invisibility wouldn't have been much of a help if anyone heard the inevitable sobs.

Better to use someone who already knew where they stood.

"So that's it," Film Brain said, "They packed up, and Linkara took Chick to see Spoony."

"I think Linkara won the game," he added, as if that was what mattered.

"Thank you," Critic told the boy "You did good."

Film Brain beamed, and it was nice to know Critic could still make **someone** happy. "See? They're just worried."

He hadn't asked why Critic wanted him to eavesdrop on the others. Such loyalty made him squirm, because Critic couldn't imagine what he'd done to earn it, wasn't sure if he still deserved it.

So he let the boy believe his evidence had exonerated the others, did his best to look touched instead of **wounded**, skinning out like a hunted deer, his innards exposed and glistening.

"They're good friends," he said, and maybe they even were.

Linkara wasn't planning a mutiny. Snob wasn't smiling to his face and sneering behind his back. They were just worried, and Critic supposed he'd given them reason.

So why did it still feel like treason?

Didn't they trust him, after everything he'd done for them? Where was **their** loyalty?

And Chick…

To think that she too doubted his strength, his commitment! There were things he shared with her that weren't meant for the others, but he understood now that he would need to be more careful.

The very thought made sickness boil in his belly. He **belonged** to her, had always obeyed when she ordered him to share his thoughts. And she had never judged him for them, no matter how pathetic or depraved they might be.

Until now.

Film Brain shifted from foot to foot, and Critic felt the flare of power that meant the boy was about to ask an awkward question and didn't want to get reamed out for it. "Were you really going to…I mean…would you really dig up Ma-Ti?"

"Of course not," Critic said, and it wasn't a lie. That plan had been short-lived, for what did bones matter? Burning them wouldn't stop Ma-Ti from haunting his dreams.

He winced, because that sounded crazy even in his own head. No wonder Chick was sneaking off to whisper with Linkara and Snob about her poor, mad brother.

If he wanted to keep his twin, he needed to be worthy of her. Needed to be stronger, so that she would again enjoy the challenge of making him weak.

* * *

><p>Linkara wondered sometimes if the others remembered Spoony.<p>

They visited less often now, and he imagined it must catch them by surprise, that sudden realization it had been days, weeks, since they'd spoken to him. Then they'd hurry down to the bedroom, make their excuses, ask after his health, and that would be it for another week or two or three.

Mickey and Tom at least were faithful. They never made Spoony wait for a bathroom break when he called, were patient when boredom led to marathon showers.

Linkara was grateful for them. Grateful for Liz, who looked after them both, and even for Benzaie. Whatever animosity he'd felt toward the bear had faded to a vague not quite anger. Spoony needed friends. Linkara didn't count now, because a lover was something else entirely.

Friends were someone to bitch to when Linkara stole the covers, when his mother henning worked Spoony's last nerve. He wanted that for Spoony, because he did plenty of bitching of his own.

It was just that Spoony could be so **stubborn**. Wouldn't take his pills when the migraine was still a headache, no, he had to be whimpering on the floor before he even admitted to being in pain. Wouldn't ask Liz to take a step back when she was making him twitchy, because it was so much better to have Lantern drive her out of the room entirely.

Just the bitching was enough. Linkara didn't need solutions, just someone to listen and maybe cluck in sympathy once in awhile. Liz was the best at it, mostly because she paid him no mind at all.

Still, even his own ranting made Linkara smile. Moaning to friends was just something people did when they were in relationship, which meant **he** was** in a relationship.**

With** Spoony. **

"Mine," Linkara laid claim night after night, fierce when it had once been tentative, feeling the same bone deep thrill each time.

But there were ways Spoony could be stubborn that Linkara could not share, even with Liz. He'd done so well their first time together, respecting his own boundaries and helping Linkara to learn them.

Four weeks later, and they'd yet to see other naked below the waist. And Linkara was fine with that. More than fine, because when it came to Spoony, he'd always been happy to take what he could get.

It was Spoony who pushed himself to offer more. Pushed himself too far, and a visit from The Bum could make Linkara wilt faster than anything else.

"You're enough," Linkara told him, "Just this, just you, it's enough. It's everything."

But he knew that was new to Spoony, the idea that he was perfect as he was. New and a little scary, because Spoony didn't even have a frame of reference for it, had gone his whole life thinking he needed to be fixed before he could be loved.

So Linkara took advantage of his captive audience and told Spoony he was beautiful at every opportunity, using the most overwrought, flowery language he could muster. That he was strong, that he was brave.

Spoony **hated** it.

Linkara's best effort so far had been the poem, with its tortured rhymes listing the various ways in which Superman fell far short of Spoony's measure. It had earned Linkara a set of scratches from Lantern, which only meant it had done its job.

He was already working on a series of haiku. There was one he was particularly proud of comparing Spoony's hair to a black rose in winter. When those were finished, he thought he might try his hand at songwriting.

Spoony was stubborn.

Linkara was **motivated**.

* * *

><p>Survival of the fittest had taken its toll on the fox pups.<p>

It had been the coyotes, mostly, stealing them away one by one. Their mother didn't waste time on mourning, and perhaps that had been why she was able to save the last. A scruffy little guy, all legs, with black tips to his sandy coat.

Now he stalked a lizard, scuttling from rock to rock, already licking his chops. His heads were more cooperative than his mother's, the left focused on the prey while the right kept a look out for bigger, nastier hunters.

"Critic?"

He'd been so focused on the chase that Snob's entrance hadn't registered. He cracked his head against the ceiling when he jumped in empty reflex, only fumbling for his gun as an afterthought.

"Owww," he whined, rubbing the sore spot, "What the fuck are you doing? It's not your shift yet."

"It's Jello for desert tonight," Snob said, "And Paw's doing a concert. You wanna head down?"

Critic had been settling himself back into the chair, but now he floated up again, hanging awkward in midair. "You sure?"

"It's fucking watch, Critic, I'm not giving you a kidney. Go."

He gathered his things, listening to the tap tap of Snob's fingers on the keyboard and the crunching of teeth against scales on the monitor. It felt silly to be so excited, but it had been a long time since he joined the others at the long table in the mess.

He **missed** them.

And that was the silly part, because it wasn't like he didn't see them daily, Joe and Larios and all the rest. Maybe it wasn't the individuals he missed but Channel Awesome. They were so much louder when they were together, so much more alive, and how had he ended up on the outside of something he'd helped to create?

But they'd left his chair empty at the head of the table, and even Linkara smiled at him when he walked in. Critic leaned back and put his arm around Chick while they listened to Paw sing of cake and lies in a robot's voice.

It would have been perfect but for the empty chair at the table. A hollow space beside Linkara, and the sight of it filled Critic with a terrible ripping sorrow.

'_I love him too,'_ he wanted to tell the other man, _'I've done more for him than you know.'_

Then Chick was nudging him, pointing with her chin to the other empty chairs stacked against the wall, the empty tables pushed to one side.

"Have you been thinking about it?" she whispered, and it was easy in that mellow moment to imagine those tables filled, to imagine the chatter and life that would come with new faces.

But it was easy too to imagine only this for the rest of their days. '_This is my family,'_ Critic thought, and the idea did not frighten him.

"I have, and I still am. Don't be impatient," Critic said, "We've got all the time in the world."

It turned out to be a lie, but later Critic would think of that dinner with its dessert of ground bone and red dye, and he would be grateful he'd gotten one last chance to pretend.


	24. Chapter 24

It started off as a good day.

Liz surprised him in the quiet, lazy hours after breakfast, knocking lightly at the bedroom door with her knuckles. They'd feasted that morning on cantaloupe she'd grown, and the effort had left her pale but proud.

Still she did not feel it was enough. She wanted to earn her keep, and in doing so take her place as a full-fledged member of the team.

Critic called them together for a vote. It surprised him when it was unanimous, Chick raising her hand and catcalling with the rest. But then his sister had always been one to choose her battles, and to stand against Liz now would win her only contempt.

He took Liz down to the systems room himself that night, where Mickey sat and watched the desert creatures play. Together they showed her how to work the cameras and alarms.

The only warning was the light thump of bare feet on the tiles behind them.

He came through the ceiling, a raider with narrow eyes and tanned skin. The damn ceiling, phasing down past stone and steel, and how was Critic meant to anticipate **that**?

He carried no weapons and wore no clothes. But he would have been prepared to be vulnerable, would have trained for it, as Critic had once trained his people in a ghost town before they marched to Molossia's door.

Liz sat in the chair with Critic at her shoulder, leaning close to point out the fox pup and his mother. It was Mickey's bad luck to be standing just a few steps back, making him the first target.

A kick to the back of the knee buckled his leg and sent him pitching forward. A blow to the neck gave him momentum.

His head smacked against the corner of the console with a sound that was horribly familiar. Juicy and ripe, just the same as the rind of a cantaloupe cracking wide.

Critic turned, set eyes on the enemy...

...and froze.

Here was every fear that had haunted him since Ma-Ti's death, and he could do nothing in the face of this nightmare.

Fingers scrabbled at his hip. Liz dragged his gun free of its holster. Fired twice.

The first shot went wide, pinging off the wall and shattering the white tiles. The second took the stranger in the neck.

There was some gurgling, a few vague thrashing movement like a man drowning, but it was over quickly.

When the raider lay still Liz put a bullet in his chest. Obliterated his face with another squeeze of the trigger, and kept going until the clip ran empty. She threw the empty gun at the ruin that was left, screaming a curse that sounded more like a sob.

Only then did Critic remember himself. He turned, but not to comfort Liz. His attention was on the monitors, and it did not take him long to find what he was searching for.

Five men.

Lurking just at the edge of the camera's range, casting their shadows on the canyon walls. And Critic understood how badly he had failed.

The dead man that Liz now battered with her fists had been inside Molossia before. He had known where the systems room was located, had known their security consisted of a single person staring at a monitor.

He had to admire it, the simplicity of the plan, the audacity of it. One man had been sent on ahead to dispatch the guard, and when that was done it would have been a simple matter to let the others inside. The raiders would have taken Molossia while they slept, would have killed them in their beds.

Critic opened the door.

The men crept forward, trusting in the signal they had been waiting for. They had to cut the fence with wire cutters, and that amused him somehow, watching them struggle to find the right angle, exchanging fist bumps and high fives when the first link popped free.

Critic waited until they were well within range before lowering the turret shields.

He cut them down in a wildly wasteful spray of bullets. Their bodies juddered in place for long moments before they fell, and Critic smiled to watch them dance.

A flash of brown caught his eye. Zull, Motherfucker darted out into the open and made a run for the canyon entrance. She didn't make it three strides, and what was left wasn't anything recognizable.

Critic hit the kill switch before her pup could follow after. _'You bastards,_' he thought, and the regret burned almost brighter than his rage, _'Look what you made me do.'_

Now that the danger was over, Critic remembered the alarm. Two short blasts, trusted in that to be enough to summon the others.

He turned then to Mickey.

And moaned, helpless in the face of this too. The wound was a great red dent at the temple, the skin peeled back to show shattered bone.

Liz joined him when he knelt at the man's side. She pressed her fingers against Mickey's wrist only to shake her head with a snort. "I don't...I don't know what I'm feeling for," she confessed.

But Critic couldn't imagine pulse rate would matter when the brain lay exposed, fragments of skull digging down into gray meat.

The others were pushing into the room now. Gawking at Critic, at the raider's corpse, at Mickey. Tom fell back against the door frame, shaking his head in violent denial.

The last to arrive were Linkara and Spoony. Linkara's eyes were hard, daring Critic to make an issue of it, and Critic wanted so badly to hurt him, to shake him, because he didn't have time for it, this petty sanctimonious **bullshit**.

"We were invaded," Critic said, as if the evidence wasn't there to see, "The ceiling..."

Mickey woke.

Woke screaming, his pupils wide and fixed. Woke **suffering**.

Tom was silent, but his screaming was in his eyes, in the rigid line of his back. Liz turned away, and Critic would have given anything to be able to do the same, to turn his back on this **thing** that had so recently been a friend.

"Your gun," he said to Snob, who stood close while the others flinched back.

But Snob stood unmoving, while on the floor Mickey went on screaming, a distorted wail of pain and nothing but.

"Someone give me a fucking gun!"

Still no one did, and the screams were dying down to a keening groan that was somehow worse. Critic felt it shuddering in his own chest and throat, an echo that had him clenching his fists until his nails gouged his palms.

So Critic did what he had to do. Because he was responsible, and responsibility was always all or nothing.

His own gun lay discarded only a few feet away. It felt lighter for being empty, but it did the job when he raised it high and hammered the stock down against Mickey's broken skull.

Silence.

Wonderful silence, terrible silence. Critic twisted away to vomit in great, cramping heaves, and the bile mingled with the blood spreading across the tiles.

Hands gripped his shoulder. He was yanked up, spun round, head flopping loose on his neck when Tom shook him.

Critic didn't try to defend himself. Just went limp, inviting punishment, needing it.

Expect Tom was hugging him close, a crushing grip but not a cruel one. Bending down to tuck his face against Critic's neck, whispering to him in a rapid stream that took Critic a few seconds to decipher.

"Thank you thank you thank you..."

Critic wiggled free and puked again, down his own front this time. He wished he hadn't heard, wished Tom had been saying anything else.

Chick steadied him, drew him close despite the mess he'd made of himself. It was a long moment before he found the strength to lift his head.

And found them watching, all of them. Some with pity, some with horror, but watching. Judging.

"I had to," he told them, "Ma-Ti..."

Had lingered. Had begged, at the end, and Critic hadn't been able to help, not then. But he was older now, colder now, and understood better what mercy meant.

"You killed him," Film Brain whispered. Almost to himself, testing out the words and the weight of them, and Critic could see the last of his childhood flicker and die. "You killed him!"

And now at last Critic felt anger, and it was good that have that warmth within to help stave off the chill of shock.

"He was suffering," Snob said, "It was...he had to."

_'I did,_' thought Critic, _'Because you **wouldn**'t.' _


	25. Chapter 25

Critic took the first turn with the shovel.

First, last, and every turn in between.

The others would have helped, if only he'd allowed it. But he needed this, the blisters that rose and broke in bursts of bright, hot pain.

They buried the mother fox beside Mickey, a ragged scrap of bloodied fur. The raiders they dragged far into the desert, the first of the vultures alighting before they could turn their backs. It was close to dawn when they returned to Molossia and gathered at the grave.

And still they looked to Critic. Looked to him for a eulogy that would make sense of it, that would give them permission to grieve and remind them there would come a time when the grieving would be done.

But his lungs were tight with the dust of the grave, and Critic said nothing.

* * *

><p>The systems room had been wiped down, wiped clean, restored to a place of pristine white. Critic took Mickey's tie from his pocket, the faded pink of it splattered with brown.<p>

When the others filtered in and saw it nailed above the console their mouths twisted, pinched expressions of shock and horror. Chick patted his arm. Snob pressed a mug of water into his hand. Softly they suggested that the tie might be taken down, or at the very least washed.

And deep within Critic, the anger surged.

Because life was cruel, and they couldn't afford to forget it.

And if life was cruel, Critic needed to be that much crueler just to keep ahead of it. It was that realization that made him drop the mug to the floor and stand.

Spoony was close, and Critic took him by the shoulder. Not gently, taking full advantage of his height to loom over the smaller man. At first Spoony only tried to shake him off, more startled than panicked, and that impressed Critic despite himself.

But Critic dug his fingers in deeper, stepped closer, pressing Spoony back against the wall.

A blur, and fangs scraped Critic's throat, drawing a thin trickle of blood. Linkara pulled Lantern back by the collar of his shirt, shaking him a little like an unruly dog.

"No," he said, but his glare was for Critic.

He turned his attention to Lantern, and now his eyes were soft. "Wake up. Spoony, wake up."

But it was The Bum who rose, leaning in against Linkara and making him stagger. "Touched me," the alter mumbled, "Not nice."

"No, it wasn't," Linkara agreed. His voice was rising, falling into that strange singsong he used around The Bum, not quite patronizing but coming uncomfortably close. "I saw, but he won't do it again. Right, Critic?"

"I'm truly sorry," Critic said, soft and low, because he owed them both that much at least.

When he spoke again it was more loudly, playing to the larger audience even as he kept his eyes on Linkara. "I apologize for scaring him, but let's consider it a demonstration. We were invaded tonight. I let you have free access, Linkara, because I trusted you not to let him out without permission. You had no way of knowing the battle was over. If he lost control like that in the middle of a firefight, he could have gotten himself or someone else killed."

"Like you said, I had no way of knowing what was happening." Linkara was responding too quickly, with too much confidence. Had he been planning what to say even as they lowered Mickey down into the earth, muttering retorts instead of prayers? "I couldn't leave him helpless in an emergency. Doesn't he deserve a fighting chance if the rest of us are killed?"

"So you save him and risk the rest of us."

Critic didn't bother with sarcasm, just let the statement stand as simple fact. Linkara sputtered, and that made The Bum whine high and anxious. The trash was already gathering at his feet, unidentifiable bits and pieces that smelt of burnt plastic.

"No, but I can't….he's not the enemy, Critic!"

There was a raw patch at Critic's throat that said otherwise, and he tipped his chin up to better show it off, as Linkara had once paraded his own marks of passion.

Linkara flipped a dismissive hand. "He could have torn out your jugular," he said, "But he didn't, because he's in control. He's always in control, because he's always **him**. He's **Spoony**, Critic!"

But of course Critic knew that already.

The Bum, Lantern and the rest...their motives were Spoony's own, and that was why Critic had trusted him to show restraint when it mattered. But if Spoony was always Spoony, regardless of the body he wore, it meant that Spoony had been the one to pin Chick against a wall, the one to ignore her pleas, the one to bruise her mouth with cruel kisses.

"I warned you before what would happen if you broke the rules," Critic said, "I'll make sure you get time to visit every day."

"You can't…" Linkara breathed, but Critic was already turning away.

It didn't take longer to enter the commands into the computer. The silence behind him was like the silence after Mickey's death, brittle and thick, a horror movie hush. Critic allowed himself a deep breath before he turned back around, because he knew this wasn't over yet.

"Tom, take Spoony to his room. The door will be open for you, just make sure you shut it when you leave."

It was a test, and they must have known it. Tom took a step forward before wavering, look back at the others for direction, but they wouldn't meet his eyes.

But they didn't protest either, and Linkara was sputtering again. "You can't…" he tried again, but hadn't they already established that Critic **could**? That he could do anything he felt needed doing, because no one would **stop** him?

"Maybe we could talk about this," Liz said, and of course it would be her. Hadn't Critic known she would be trouble, that very first day, when she'd smiled a red tinted smile and lied to their faces?

"So let's talk. Tell me you'd want him at your back in a fight. Tell me you'd be comfortable in a room alone with him. Look, I should have done this from the start…that's on me. But the needs of the many…"

"If you quote Star Trek right now, you're doing down."

Linkara's hand glowed green, and Critic had no doubt the threat was sincere.

It didn't matter. He'd already won.

Even Benzaie only shuffled his paws when Tom took The Bum gently by the arms. "You're really going to do this," Linkara whispered, as if there had been some question before that moment, some chance he might wiggle away from the consequences of his own actions.

Joe and Phelous were there to restrain him when he stepped toward Critic, mumbling their own apologies. Linkara pulled against them, but if Critic had won, he had lost, and he knew it. He struggles were weak, accomplishing little more than stirring up the trash on the floor.

It was The Bum who exploded into violence when Tom tried to tug him toward the door. He shuddered, and Black Lantern flailed. SWS pushed in close, begging for a rougher touch. Insano threatened to take his vengeance with the power of science.

And then the cycle started over.

Before Spoony had accepted his captivity with beaten down dignity. Now his desperation was too great for any one alter to hold, his body flickering in and out of focus so fast it hurt the eyes. It was a chilling display, proof of just how easy it was to push the man past the threshold of control.

Critic couldn't have planned it better.

And still he found himself wincing along with Linkara, found he had to clench his fists to stop himself from reaching out. He could recognize love when he saw it, and Spoony's fear, his panic, was love at its worst, raw and all consuming.

It wasn't being locked away that made Spoony fight. It was a future without Linkara close at hand, a life in which visits would be restricted to when Critic had the time and inclination to allow them.

"It won't be like that," Critic repeated to each alter in turn, but he knew it was an empty promise. There would be times Linkara would not be there when Spoony needed him, and it would be Critic's fault.

Tom was struggling to keep his grip on the smudge of color and motion that the alters had become, handicapped by his own desire to be gentle. When the seizure came it ripped Spoony from his grasp and sent him crashing to the floor.

It was like watching Mickey all over again, the way he shivered and shook, body contorting in a brutal arc.

And there was an instant, a stretched out second, when Critic thought it would be a kindness, to do for Spoony as he had done for Mickey. To let the man rest, and hadn't Spoony earned it?

"Please." Linkara sagged back against Phelous and Joe, forcing them to either take his weight or let him fall. Tucked his head down to show submission, meek as a supplicant before a priest. "**Please**, Critic."

Critic nodded.

Released, Linkara scrambled forward on hands and knees. Pulled Spoony onto his side to keep him from choking on the foam that boiled from his mouth. Cushioned his head on his thigh to protect it from the tiles.

After that, there was nothing left to do but wait it out.

It took too long, close to ten minutes, long enough for Linkara to stop praying and start cursing. But when the convulsions finally stopped Spoony was Spoony again, glazed eyes blind to everything but the man who held him.

"It's okay." Linkara used his sleeve to wipe the froth and vomit from Spoony's face and did his best to smile. "We're okay. Don't…don't do this, okay?"

It was strange, how bitter victory could be.

"Tom," Critic said softly, and Linkara moved aside.

Tom cradled Spoony with the care afforded to fragile things. The others backed away when he passed them with his burden. Benzaie shuffled his paws, Snob focused on the monitor, and even Liz said nothing.

Critic hated them for it.

"Can I go with him?" Linkara asked.

So cautious in the asking, and Critic hated him for that, hated him most of all.

"Go," he said, "I'm not a fucking **monster**. You think I enjoyed that?"

"No, I don't know what you are anymore." Linkara had pretended compliance as long as he could, but here already anger was creeping back into his voice "I don't know **who** you are anymore."

"I'm not Spoony," Critic said, "That's the problem. I don't get to be anyone but who I am."


	26. Chapter 26

Spoony lay splayed out across the bed, all long limbs folded at uncomfortable angles. Linkara straightened him out and bent to press a kiss to lips that tasted of bile.

In the shadows behind them Tom shifted, but Linkara refused to look round. Waited in silence for the man to leave them, to follow his orders and shut fast the door.

He kissed Spoony again when the lock slid home, a distraction to keep himself from flinching at the finality of it. But Spoony stirred when he pulled back, eyes screwed shut against the light, groping for Linkara with clumsy hands in a mute but eloquent plea.

"Easy," Linkara told him, "I'm not going anywhere."

And laughed, because that had been a promise once, not this simple statement of fact. Now that he was **in**, he couldn't get **out** until Critic decided to allow it.

If he ever did. If he didn't leave them there to starve, and what comfort would being together bring them then?

Linkara knew the thought for a paranoid fantasy. If Critic meant to kill them, he would do it face to face. He would give his apologies, his justifications, but he would look them in the eye, and Linkara supposed there was something to admire in that.

Just a paranoid fantasy, so why didn't it **feel** like one?

"Les?"

_Lewis. _

"Right here, Noah," Linkara whispered in answer to the slurred mumble. He propped Spoony up long enough to fed him some pain pills, then shifted them both so the heavy head rested in his lap. Rubbed the other man's back, smiling when he hummed his appreciation.

"Not going anywhere," he said again, and this time the words brought no fear.

For the moment, there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

* * *

><p>But that paranoid fantasy haunted Linkara over the days and weeks ahead.<p>

He dreamed of it. The slow death. The room like a coffin, already buried deep beneath the earth.

Critic was no monster. He was flesh and blood, a man, and that meant he was vulnerable.

In this world without doctors and hospitals, there were many ways a man might die. What would happen to Linkara and Spoony if Critic succumbed to appendicitis? If he fell in the next invasion, for surely there would be a next, surely it was only a matter of time.

He asked the question of Snob, when he could bring himself to speak to the man again.

"I have access, if it comes to that," Snob told him, "Don't worry about it."

Linkara didn't remember throwing the punch. But he must have done it, because Snob was on the floor, and Linkara's knuckles were aching in the most satisfying way.

"**I** worry," he said.

He didn't offer Snob a hand up, just stood back and watched while the man wiped at his nose with his sleeve.

"I'm an ass," Snob said when the bleeding had slowed, and it was easier between them after that.

Easier, but not the same. Linkara no longer knew where he stood with Snob, with any of the others. He ate with them, at Spoony's insistence, but he could not claim them as friends, could not forget the way they had stepped aside or forgive them for the pity in their eyes.

But what anger he felt toward them was low banked and smoldering. The heat of his rage was all for Critic, and it was just as well that he rarely saw the man.

No one offered now to relieve the man during meals. There was a brittle edge to Critic, a white rim to his eyes that kept the rest of them at bay. Even Chick was careful with him, soothing him with little pats and whispered words.

As bad as things had become, for Linkara there was a reminder that others had suffered far worse. Tom had never been one for loud, flashy displays, and his grief too was understated, confined to the lines of his face and the grim set of his mouth. To go from Handsome Tom and 8 Bit Mickey to just Tom...

Linkara had tried hugging him, desperate to offer even that small comfort, to absorb some tiny measure of pain. But Tom had only stood waiting, and released had simply walked away.

It was Linkara who wept. Bitter tears that stung, and he could not had said just what he was mourning.

Mickey, of course, but the loss went deeper. Some part of them all was mourning Molossia, not its tiles or its turrets but the home she had become.

There was no safe haven in the world. It was something they knew well, for hadn't they killed a man and claimed what had been his for their own? And perhaps they'd even felt it, in those early days when Molossia still smelled of Baugh and his family.

But for each of them had come the day they woke and thought _'mine'_, and in doing so had forgotten Molossia could again become _'theirs'_.

Facing their own mortality did not stop them from taking each other for granted. They did not look for beauty in the simple things, or strive to live in the moment.

It only chilled them, left them cold and weak and numb. They yawned over their plates, went to bed early and woke grudgingly.

And why not? This was not their story.

It was the story of a place, the story of Molossia. If they died tomorrow, she would stand, and she would not remember their names.

* * *

><p>There was a limit.<p>

Had to be a limit, and so Spoony was careful with Linkara's time. He greeted him with a kiss and sent him off with a smile, listened to his troubles and made little of his own.

Because he could see the little cringes, the tensing of Linkara's shoulders when the door clicked shut. And he knew what panic did to a man, how it fed upon itself.

How quickly it grew **teeth**.

And all because of a lock for which Spoony held the key, if only he could trust himself to use it. But Spoony had his limits too, and to open the door would be to open himself to the one alter he had never been able to control.

It was a truth that went unspoken between them, and so Spoony knew he was forgiven for his weakness, for the selfishness that kept him from making the offer. Instead Linkara paced, a blur of motion that made the room seem that much smaller.

Outside the bedroom door waited Critic and his hard, measuring eyes. There was Tom and his grief, Snob and his desperation to support everyone and commit to nothing.

But outside the bedroom door was also freedom, and Spoony knew this too. The fear unique to being dependent on others, the terrifying realization that everyone, **everyone**, had a fucking limit. The realization that you could be loved, and still a burden.

So he did his best, to make the room and his bed an oasis for Linkara. A place to rest, to forget, if only for a few hours, just how royally screwed they were.

Spoony could not make Linkara stay, but he could give him a reason to **return**.

But it was hard, and getting harder, because Critic had done more than just rattle his cage. There had been times in the recent past when the alters had been distant, their whispering faint and easy to ignore.

Now they were standing at his shoulder, breathing down his fucking neck. There was a pressure behind his eyes that no pills could touch, a terrible sense of fullness, of **pregnancy**.

Wresting back control only meant more seizures, and more worries for Linkara. Instead Spoony was learning to pick his battles, to let the alters out to have their fun during the long, lonely days so the nights could belong to Linkara.

And if that meant Spoony had no time of his own, he'd just have to deal.

Because there was a limit, and he could see just how close Linkara was to hitting his.

* * *

><p>"Kiss me," Chick ordered, and Critic obeyed.<p>

But if felt like obedience, not worship. Even in their bed he thought only of turrets and camera, and he hated his own creeping impatience. Hated that even this had been taken from him.

"Hurt me," he ordered, and Chick obeyed.

It wasn't enough.


	27. Chapter 27

"Maybe I was wrong," Chick said later, after she at least had gotten what she wanted, "About Spoony."

Critic didn't need her to explain. Wrong in thinking the man could be tamed, could be **kept**.

"Maybe," he allowed, "Probably."

She rolled onto her side, her face a stranger's in the dim glow of the lights. "I think they're ready now...I think they'd get it."

Here was another thing he didn't need her to explain, and that frightened him. Still, he played his role and asked the question that she wanted. "Get what?"

"How dangerous he is," Chick said, and there was ridicule there, a mild condescension that had her shaking her head in despair. It wasn't directed at him, but toward Joe and Tom and the rest, the ones who'd viewed Spoony as a friend even after he'd shown his fangs. "They weren't ready before, but now...they can't pretend it won't happen again, now that they know what he's capable of."

She kissed him then and he opened for it, wanting to drink of his twin's courage, sharp-edged though it might be. He envied her it, that she could have the hardness he aspired to without the guilt he insisted on.

And he wished for darkness, hating the faint luminescence that exposed his weakness. He knew she saw it in his eyes by the way the kiss gentled, becoming more about comfort than triumph.

"Do you really forgive him?" he asked, and left unspoken all the questions that went with it.

_'Were you only pretending? Or was it all a game, to make yourself look better, kinder, so when it did come time to be done with it, I would be the one to look cruel?' _

It shamed him, this doubt, because this was **his sister**. But he asked because she was his, and he knew her so very well.

She laughed against his lips, a warm huff of air that made him shiver.

"You're learning," she said, "But, yes, I do."

Critic sighed, just gently, and pulled Chick close, tucked her tight against his side despite her protests.

"If we force Spoony out, Linkara will follow," he said into her hair.

She shrugged as best she could in his clinging embrace. "Well, that solves a different problem, doesn't it?"

It would solve many problems, Critic knew. Linkara was being careful now, all but bowing when Critic passed by, but his lowered eyes were cold.

"You were talking to him...them...before. About me."

No question here. Critic only wanted her to know that he knew. When she only shrugged again he felt the fool.

"I was trying to get Linkara to stop acting like a brat, and it was working before all this went down. Next time just ask me instead of making your pet snoop around."

There was a reason Critic did not play chess against his sister.

He thought suddenly of the mother fox. For all the care she'd taken, the desert had stolen her cubs, and man had stolen her life. And he thought of Spoony and Linkara walking the dusty trails of that same desert. So many dangers, heat and thirst and nomads with guns, and he wondered which the two would succumb first.

Linkara, he wagered. Spoony had always been a tough little bastard.

"You did forgive him," he said suddenly, and if it sounded like an accusation that was only because it was one, "I know you. You meant it."

Chick went still against him.

Then dug in with nails and teeth, dug in deep and **clung**. Critic squealed, but he knew better than to try and pry her loose.

This wasn't the pleasant ache that followed the whip. It just hurt, bringing tears to his eyes and an apology to his lips, though he wasn't quite sure what he was meant to be apologizing **for**.

When she finally released him there was blood on her mouth, a shadow stain that smeared when she touched it.

"I did. I do. I don't blame him," she said, "I'm not a monster either, brother."

But she smirked to show she'd gotten the joke, let him lick away the taste of himself from her mouth.

"No, you're not," he said, as if she needed his small reassurances, "I know you care about him."

She just didn't let it get in the way.

But Critic couldn't help himself, and that was the problem. As Linkara was so fond of pointing out, it was **Spoony**.

Even before the interview there had been the audition tape. Filmed on VHS, and it had taken Critic two days to hunt up a player for it. And there he was, a white sheet pinned to the wall behind him, a robot with a vacuum for a head at his side, nervous as fuck but **clever**.

The first few months had been rough, the next six only slightly less so. The other reviewers were gun shy around Spoony, avoiding his desk like the crazy was catching, and Critic had to come down hard before they gave him the chance he deserved.

But it had been worth it in the end, and not just for the increased page views and ad revenue. Spoony had become something more than a friend, something closer to a brother. It had never been about pity between them, and that was something Chick had never understood.

When Critic wore himself thin doing crossovers, it had been Spoony who chewed out Ma-Ti for overbooking his schedule. When Chick's games drove him to drink, it had been Spoony who listened to his ramblings and pretended not to realize the girlfriend he complained of was also his sister.

Critic had done his best to take care of Spoony, but he'd only been returning the favor.

"They stay," he said.

He could have let it stand, could have left it as a promise, an order, but he didn't, because he **was** learning.

"For now."

* * *

><p>Exhaustion kept them docile. They managed only quiet surprise when Critic floated into the mess and took his place at the head of the table.<p>

He looked them over, the shadows under their eyes, that plates that sat half-full. Rose up higher, and prepared himself to speak.

And the dull surprise became hope that easily. This was what they'd been waiting for, all this time since Mickey's death, though they hadn't know it. Waiting for Critic to make sense of things, to push them on past their sorrow and fear.

Critic scowled.

"Grow the fuck up."

They blinked.

"That's it?" Larios asked when the silence grew tiresome.

"That's it," Critic answered, "Life is cruel, kiddos, so **grow the fuck up** and get with the program. Chick's minding the monitors, by the way, which is the first thing you should have asked when I walked in."

They blinked again, because she had been there with them earlier, hadn't she? There was her plate, scraped clean unlike the rest, and just when had she slipped out?

"I'm **tired**." And Critic looked it, looked worn down and used up. "I can't lead you by the hand through this. Losing Mickey was terrible...but we're still here."

That at least they could admit to. They took a breath, an audible sigh that swept the room and yes, yes, they were there, were living.

And despite everything, they wanted it to stay that way.

But Critic wasn't finished yet.

"We need to stop the broadcasts."

No preamble, no attempt to soften the blow.

"Don't be idiots," Critic said when they would have protested, "Radio signals can be tracked. We can't afford to advertise our location.

"Anyway, do you really think anyone is listening?"

The cruelty of it left them reeling, though it was nothing they didn't already know. Those who wandered the wastes were too concerned with surviving to take solace in memories.

"No broadcasts," Critic said, and he had the audacity to smile. "And we need to get the work schedule back on track.

"Paw and Phelous, I want you to get started on a fourth turret. Tom and Liz..."

* * *

><p>"Linkara, are you listening?"<p>

He hadn't been, of course. Had been thinking of Midway Soldiers, and how Liz had planned to broadcast their first game later that week. From Spoony's room, because he would have been the DM, and had Critic considered that at all?

Now the others would have one less reason to visit, and Spoony would have one less distraction to keep his mind occupied and his own. He would have liked to think they would still play for the pleasure of it without the hope of listeners, but he knew better.

"I'm sorry, I was distracted," he said, and did his best to hide the anger that was fast becoming hate, because he knew his place, "What did you need?"

"That's okay," Critic said, and his tone was as syrupy sweet as Linkara's had been, "We need to decentralize the inventory. I want every room to have a set of supplies, and yes, that includes Spoony's. We don't want to cut ourselves off if there's another attack and we need to go on lockdown for more than a few hours. Start with the systems room. Benzaie will help you."

A peace offering, perhaps, as if Critic had known Linkara's fear that Spoony would be left without food or water should something happen to the rest of them. If Linkara had been smarter he would have taken it with gratitude.

"No," he said instead, and Critic lifted a brow in warning at the force behind the word.

But this was too much, another punishment when Linkara had already been brought to heel.

"No," he said again, but softly now, a plea. "Not Benzaie. I won't work with him. Give me anyone else."

Further down the table the bear shifted. Looked away, and that was good, because Linkara wanted the furry bastard to squirm, wanted him to **hurt**.

"Fine," Critic said, "You can have Snob, just get it done."

He finished assigning tasks with a crisp efficiency that left them dazed. "Any questions?"

"You didn't eat," Snob said, tentative, as they all were with Critic these days.

But when the man looked at him there was warmth in his eyes. "I'll get something later. Thank you."

His gratitude was genuine, as if Snob had extended himself by showing simple concern. It was almost enough to make Linkara feel some measure of pity.

Almost.

Not quite.

Now Critic looked them over again and sighed, as if taking notice of their pain for the first time. "We're going to get through this," he said, "Trust me."

Trust? That had died alongside Mickey. Even for those who believed Critic had done the right thing, the necessary thing, not just for their dying friend but for Spoony. Each carried the knowledge that none of them were loved so well that they would not be sacrificed on behalf of the rest.

But loyalty? That was a hardier emotion. It lived on even in Linkara, kept him from raising his hand and striking Critic down with a flash of green light. It was a strange and terrible thing, to learn that hate could exist alongside love.

Critic smiled in the silence, but there was something in its twisted corners that spoke of disappointment.

"I'm heading back to the systems room. Linkara, do you want me to leave you in with Spoony for the night?"

And Linkara hated **himself** then, for the answer did not come quick or sure.

"Of course," he said at last, "I'm ready."


	28. Chapter 28

It should have soothed Linkara, to know that Snob could open the door if Critic could not, would not. To know that soon there would be food stored away in the corner.

But what would happen, if Critic and Snob should fall together? When the food ran out?

Linkara pulled Spoony closer, kissed him deeper. Tried to quiet the anxiety prickling under his skin with the taste and warmth of the other man.

He thought he understood now, in some small way, had some shadow of what it was to be Spoony. The intrusive thoughts that barged in and took up residence, bulky and squat, pushing the smaller, everyday concerns out.

His next thrust came too hard, almost vicious, drawing a surprised little grunt from his partner. Linkara apologized with another kiss, a dozen of them, each softer than the last.

It was still new, to be the one on top. New and powerful, with Spoony laid out before him, there for the taking. That they both still wore their boxers didn't make Spoony look any less vulnerable, and Linkara took care to keep the trust he'd been given.

They rocked together, slow but without grace, messy with the lube they used to prevent chaffing. And it was good, always so good, always perfect.

But still Linkara could feel the door at his back. With its lock that glowed green, the same color as the energy that thrummed through his veins.

"No," Spoony whispered when Linkara would have turned round. "I'm here. Be **with** me."

He tried, because here was home, because here was Spoony. Spoony, who tried so hard to be a soft place for Linkara to fall.

Linkara knew there was a cost to it, could see the strain under Spoony's smile. But he was selfish enough to take what he was given, this small measure of peace amongst the chaos.

"You take such good care of me," he told Spoony now, because it was true.

He pushed up on his elbows, kissed his way down Spoony's chest and lower to lavish his scar with attention. Licked hot across the ruined skin before blowing cool across it.

And now something else that Linkara had only recently been allowed. "Okay?" he asked first, brushing his fingers just above the band of Spoony's boxers, watching the jump of his stomach at the ticking touch.

"Please."

Linkara tugged the band down. Not far, an inch at most, revealing skin reddened and tender where elastic had left its mark. Spoony groaned when Linkara sucked and nibbled at it, chin rubbing across against the slimy fabric of Spoony's boxers.

There was a promise here, of more to come, more to touch and taste and **have**, and Linkara worked his own fevered self against the mattress. Spoony bucked under him and then he was sitting up, hunched over and awkward, fumbling at Linkara's shoulders and pulling him up.

They rutted together, and it didn't take long after that.

For Spoony, at least. When he lay panting Linkara stood, retreated to a corner and turned his back. He bit down on one hand and reached inside his boxers with the other, because this was one thing that hadn't changed.

Simple necessity meant Linkara was allowed to finish in the bedroom, but Spoony still could not bring himself to watch, let alone participate.

Linkara had asked him about it once, phrasing it as delicately as he was able, well aware of what he was risking. But he wanted to understand, wanted to know where the traps lay so he could better navigate around them.

"I was never the one who started it. It was always SWS, but he would leave me to finish it. I've...I've had that, so many times, but I've never had **this**."

Waking, coming back to himself in time to feel his body's betrayal. Enduring the sticky lust of a stranger splattering his skin. Always the fall, never the rise, and never by choice.

Linkara wiped his hands on a tissue and returned to the bed. Spoony blinked up at him, all flushed cheeks and wild hair, and it made Linkara preen to see his handiwork.

"You wanna get cleaned up now, or in the morning?" he asked.

"Morning," Spoony said through a yawn, "Let Tom sleep."

But Linkara very much doubted the man had slept more than an hour or two a night since Mickey's death. Could picture him too clearly sitting in the dark, staring at the empty side of the bed.

He went without a fight when Spoony yanked him down, curling up with their legs tangled. A damp and sticky embrace, with Spoony's breath slightly sour against his face, and still Linkara sighed with the comfort of it.

Spoony stroked his back, encouraging Linkara to snuggle in that much closer. "You're thinking so loudly lately," he said, "What is it?"

Linkara was thinking of Mickey. Of Tom, and how he had thanked Critic. Of the broadcast scheduled for tomorrow, and how to break the news to Spoony that it wasn't going to happen.

And always, always, of the door.

But to say any of it would mean letting it in. To infect this place and time that made all the rest worthwhile.

"That I'm lucky to have you," he said instead, and pretended not to see the disappointment in Spoony's eyes.

* * *

><p>It took a full week for it to sink home.<p>

But when it did the grumbling started. Minor at first but spreading, until they walked heavy with anger, fists knotted at their sides.

In the end, the final straw wasn't a gun hammering down into a friend's forehead. It wasn't another friend pushed to the edge and then punished for falling.

Perhaps Critic hadn't realized how much the reviews meant to them still. More likely he hadn't cared, had been too invested in keeping them safe to worry about keeping them happy.

He should have been playing closer attention.

* * *

><p>They were divvying up packets of meatloaf and mashed potatoes when Snob turned to Linkara and scowled.<p>

"He's not crazy."

He spoke as if he'd grown tired of repeating the words, as if they were picking up a conversation that had grown stale days ago, though Linkara had spoken only rarely to the man since the attack.

"He's not crazy," Snob said again, "And he's not wrong. The broadcasts are a risk, Linkara, and so is Spoony. He's my friend too, but that doesn't change the facts."

Linkara said nothing, only went on counting. And waited.

Not for long. Snob shook his head, a sudden, violent shiver, and threw down his clipboard. The metal clip broke off, skittering across the floor at their feet.

They both stared down at it until Snob forced a chuckle. "Symbolism!" he said in a surprisingly good imitation of Film Brain. "God **damn** it, Linkara. Even if...even if he **has** gone round the bend, what the fuck are we supposed to do about it?'

"I don't know," Linkara said, expect that he did, and so did Snob. It was just that the answer was too terrible to contemplate, and Linkara knew well that loyalty could be a burden, could be a **leash**, a tether that kept him at the feet of a man who looked upon him with disdain.

"He's not crazy." Repeating it for a third time didn't make Snob sound any closer to believing it. "But I think we need a backup plan.

"Just in case."

* * *

><p>It took another week of whispering in corners before Snob and Linkara realized they weren't the only ones talking<p>

Phelous and Larios, Joe and Lord Kat, Paw and Benzaie...there were mumbles over dinner, conversations that died when others walked into the room, hummed songs of rebellion.

And slowly they gathered, cautious, testing each other with leading questions.

"Does Critic seem stressed?"

"Could a few broadcasts really be that dangerous?"

"He looks like he's not sleeping...like, at all."

So they learned who shared their fears, who could be trusted to rant in the night and smile at Critic come morning.

Only a few were excluded from these not-so-secret meetings. Handsome Tom owed Critic a debt that could not be repaid, and no one expected him to stand against the man.

And while Chick's eyes were worried, she was still Critic's twin, still his lover. It had been one thing to speak with her of ways to ease Critic's burdens, quite another to outright question her brother's sanity and ability to lead.

The last was Film Brain. Like Tom, there was a debt there, stretching back to the days before the Fall, when Critic had given the boy a job and the confidence to try again when his first reviews fell flat. They assumed that the boy would stay with his mentor until the end.

Until he barged into the mess one night, stomping over to the table where they pretended to play poker.

"I want in."

When they pretended not to understand he swept the cards and pot of candy from the table, just a child throwing a tantrum in their eyes.

But when he spoke again his voice was a man's, with a man's anger riding rough across the words.

"For Mickey. He has to pay."

"He was hurt, Film Brain." Linkara realized even as he spoke how patronizing the words were, as if Film Brain might have somehow missed the blood, the yellow curve of the skull. "You don't...you don't come back from that."

"We have painkillers and sedatives. He could have waited. We could have **tried**."

He leaned forward, fists clenched, all aggression and impulse. A man, but new to his manhood, clumsy with it.

And Linkara held up his own hands in surrender, for what would have been the point of arguing?

"Pick up the cards, kid," Larios said, "And take up a seat."

* * *

><p>Critic watched the stars come out.<p>

It was quiet in the systems room, a peaceful hush that he was coming to crave. No whispers (and did they think he didn't know, didn't hear?) No sister to shout her concerns with the lift of her brow and the curl of her lip.

There was food here if he wanted it, courtesy of Linkara and Snob. A chemical toilet if he needed it.

And a window to watch the world go by, the small dramas of coyotes and lizards playing out again and again. He whispered to himself sometimes, reviewing their stories, shaking his head at the cliché of vulture shadows circling on the red earth.

"We've seen it all a gazillion times. Cue the hawk."

And a hawk would scream, rasping and atmospheric. It was the sound of the desert, of its canyons and cacti, its buried bones.

The fox pup was grown now. He'd found himself a pretty little vixen to court, and soon there would be new cubs in the den amongst the rocks.

And that was the problem with life. It went on.

Never stopping, never giving him time to catch his damn **breath**.

Behind him the door opened. He didn't turn round, already knowing who it would be.

"Come to bed."

Chick spoke softly, but there was no mistaking it for anything less than an order.

And that was the other problem with life. It **echoed**.

He remembered standing in the stockroom a lifetime ago, looking down at the altar built to honor Baugh and Critic's own hubris. Chick had sought him out, had spoken the same words in the same tone, and Critic answered now as he had then.

"No."

Her eyes flashed, and he felt his own anger swell. A bubble of rage pressing against the walls of his chest, thinning his breath to a hiss.

She took him by the chin, nails pressing deep into thin skin. "Brother mine, I've been patient, but now I'm starting to get bored.

"Come. To. Bed."

Last time Critic had given in, given up, trailed after her like the fox pup had trailed after its mother. Let himself be taken by the hand and lead out of guilt.

Now he stood, so much taller than she, his little sister.

"No."


	29. Chapter 29

They talked into the wee hours of the morning.

And in the end nothing came of it, expect perhaps that delicious feeling of kinship that they'd been without for too long. They could agree that something needed to be done, but not on what that something might be.

Still they drifted apart satisfied, went on their way with a fire in their belly, and this too was a feeling they'd been missing.

Linkara lingered, not yet ready to return to the room where Spoony waited.

It was a blessing when he noticed Liz still sat in her chair, tapping her pen against her teeth as she studied her ever present notepad.

He slid into the chair beside her and they smiled at each. A little tentative, because they weren't the friends they'd been before Mickey's death. Weren't even the same people. There was a slump to Liz's shoulders that Linkara remembered well from the days when Baugh's murder had been his burden.

But he missed what they'd been, the way she'd let him ramble on and then cut through to the heart of the matter with sarcastic wit and a few well-chosen puns. She'd had a knack of helping him see clearly when it came to Spoony, and he badly needed that now.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Getting there," she said, "Just wish the nightmares would stop."

He should have asked her then what haunted her nights.

"I'm sorry," he said, but what sympathy he did offer was rushed, "I keep waking up with my heart pounding so hard it feels like I'm going to puke it up. And Spoony, you know, he hasn't made it through the night as himself for two weeks...he keeps saying he doesn't remember what the triggers are, but I'm not buying it. I think..."

Liz put down her pen and listened.

* * *

><p>It was another hour before Linkara returned to the bedroom and wormed his way beneath the sheets.<p>

The beep of the door opening had not woken Spoony, but the shift of the mattress roused him enough to open one glazed eye.

"You're late," he said, but he sounded worried when Linkara knew he deserved anger.

"I'm sorry." Linkara kissed him deep, trying to say with the press of his body what mattered most to Spoony.

_ 'I'm here now.'_

"Some of us got to talking," he said.

Spoony moved closer and let himself be held, and this more than the sex was something Linkara never took for granted. It sparked something hot and dangerous in his chest to know Spoony trusted him enough to forgo pride.

"What about?"

Spoony's eyes were already fluttering closed, and the question was a vague mutter. It scared Linkara, how tired he always seemed of late. The circles under his eyes had darkened to a bruise purple and his face was drawn, the small veins at his temples visible through the sallow skin.

"Oh, you know," Linkara said, "Silly stuff."

He would have felt guiltier about the lie if Spoony had been awake to hear it.

* * *

><p>Critic dreamed of Ma-Ti's back.<p>

"Look at me," he said, and it surprised him when Ma-Ti did.

There in his eyes was pity and love, and Critic went to his knees. It hurt, to be loved.

But then he knew that already.

"Talk to me." Back to begging, and he thrilled when Ma-Ti drew close.

But Ma-Ti said nothing, only leaned down to press a gentle kiss to his forehead.

Critic woke. Looked first to the monitor, reassuring himself that the only predators on the screen wore fur and scales. Stretching in a peace offering to his outraged muscles and screaming joints.

Wiped the tears from his cheeks, and went back to work.

* * *

><p>Spoony did not dream because he did not sleep.<p>

The visions that made him shiver and twitch belonged to the alters. It was one of the reasons he'd created them, to revisit the things he couldn't bear to, to dwell on the past and so leave him the present.

Before the Fall, he'd slept when the alters woke, but the Change had taken that nothingness away. And he missed it, so badly, **ached** for it. To be always awake meant that he was always thinking, always listening.

_'Oh, you know. Silly stuff.' _

Just how stupid did Linkara think he was, anyway?

He'd wanted to know what came after, and fuck, it was disappointing, just more of the same. More sex, more secrets, more condescending promises. He'd wanted someone he could trust, but also someone who would trust him in return.

He knew he wasn't being quite fair. Hadn't this been what he wanted, to give the man a haven inside Molossia, their sanctuary?

But it had worked too well, and he'd become a place to Linkara instead of a person. As much a part of the room as the bed and the walls, a way for Linkara to make himself feel strong, something to bring him pleasure at the end of the day.

Not that Spoony regretted the sex. He loved that he could take, loved that he could give, and all without fear.

But he was learning that sex wasn't everything, was barely anything. He'd felt that he'd lost more than he'd gained, felt like he was losing **himself**.

And it only made it worse, that it should be Linkara and Critic stripping him down when once they'd worked to build him up. He could remember so clearly the day he first understood that he had worth. That he **existed**, independent of his childhood and his illness.

He'd been with Channel Awesome only a few months when he tried to submit a review he knew damn well was hackneyed shit. Piss-poor editing, cockeyed camera angles, stale jokes. He's justified it as the best he could do after a rough week in therapy.

But Critic hadn't been interested in excuses. "You think you've got it tough? Try doing my job for a day. Next time you need an extension, fucking ask. I don't care if you hand things in late, but give me a tragedy like that again and you're out on your ass. Got it?"

If Critic had been the first to treat him as a person, Linkara had been the first to see him as a man. So often Spoony would catch him staring, and it was a heady thing, to be wanted. It made Spoony bold, made him wear jeans that were a touch too tight just to watch Linkara flush and bite his lip.

Between the two of them, they'd shown Spoony that he could be **more**.

More than a sacrifice.

More than a symbol.

More than a victim.

More than a head case.

But now Critic saw only the alters, and Linkara saw only a way to fill his own needs.

Spoony was becoming invisible. He was being thinned out, **hollowed out,** and holes were dangerous things for a reason.

They could be filled.

* * *

><p>Linkara dreamed of Marzgurl.<p>

Her grave, covered with flowers and Hallmark cards. The tombstone carved into twin swans, necks twining to form a heart.

All the things she'd hate, decried as foolish and frou-frou, rolling her eyes at fools who confused a rose with love.

But she'd deserved them, roses and love both, deserved better than he'd given her.

He woke, eyes stinging but dry, and that confused him until he registered the smell. Ammonia and something thicker, rank and sour.

'_Maggot smell.' _A nonsensical thought when he'd never smelled maggots in his life, but it felt true.

He fumbled for the lamp on the nightstand, and of course it was The Bum, huddled in the corner with garbage at his feet.

The alter flinched when the light came on, arms coming up to protect his head.

And Linkara had a sudden vision of a boy with the same dark hair, the same frightened eyes. Blinking against the burst of brilliance when the SWAT team broke through the door. Struggling to stand and fight despite the fever that burned in him.

Had one of them gagged at the smell of decay? Did it make them hesitate, before they pulled out their pepper spray and handcuffs?

So a lifetime later The Bum summoned trash in hopes it would protect him. Linkara sighed and rolled out of the bed.

"Hey now," he whispered, falling so easily into the sing-song of a parent comforting a child, "You're alright. What scared you?"

Because it was wrong, for The Bum to be **there** and Linkara **here**. He was the one who crowded close, the part of Spoony that Linkara was allowed to shelter and protect. The litter on the floor was building into a teetering mound, and how long had The Bum been crouching there, alone with his fears?

He took a slow step forward, arms out to show his palms Wrinkled his nose as the stench, thinking vaguely that they would need to move Spoony for the day so they could clean up the room.

The Bum whined.

Black Lantern growled.

The Bum with Lantern's fangs; Lantern with The Bum's trembling lip. Linkara shook his head, in confusion, in denial. He'd seen this before, but only for a suspended second, a flash mid-transformation.

"Easy." He didn't know how to treat this strange mix, didn't know if he should stay gentle for The Bum's sake or speak firmly to Lantern. "You know me, buddy."

He stayed where he was, moldy burgers at his feet, and waited.

But it took longer than it should have, longer than it ever had, for The Bum to approach. He scuttled, somewhere between his usual cringing and Lantern's haphazard prowling, Threw his arms around Linkara's waist, buried his face against his hip, muffling a sob that wanted to be a howl.

"You're okay.' It was a lie so dear Linkara said it for the sake of it, without even the smallest measure of belief. "We're okay."

But of course they weren't.

No one was.


	30. Chapter 30

When Critic left the system room it was only because Chick pulled him.

By the tie, of course, and he really should have thought of that before providing such a convenient leash.

"Make him take a fucking shower," Snob called after them as he settled in the chair. Chick did just that, hauling him to the washroom and stuffing him into a stall.

"I like you dirty, not filthy," she said, and for the first time in days Critic took stock of his greasy hair and greasier skin.

He felt better for being clean, and better still when Chick went to her knees for him while the water beat against his shoulders.

"I've been thinking," he said when he'd caught his breath, for there was precious to do in the systems room **but** watch and think. "Things are getting tense. I think we need to make some changes."

Chick smiled, and he understood his mistake.

"I knew you'd come round."

"No," he said to her for the second time in as many days, and saw her eyes narrow. "You can't possibly...Mickey..."

Had died at a stranger's hands, and still his sister wanted to risk calling in others.

And suddenly he missed That Other Guy with a crushing and fierce grief. They were incomplete without him. Unbalanced, and he felt it so keenly now. Their older brother had the trick of corralling Chick, of saying no in a way that made her **listen**.

"I've been thinking too," she said, "We need better security. We need a way to make it safe to let in strangers, and a way to neuter them until we can trust them. Now, don't we have someone who could give us all that, and isn't it silly not use him?"

She waited until she was sure he understood, then kissed him. And for a second excitement eddied through him, curling up his spine and shivering in his belly. They did have someone who could provide that and **more**.

The excitement became fear between breaths, just that quickly, a creeping dread.

"No." A third time, and surely that was a record, surely there would be punishment. "You don't understand. I've seen what he can do. You can't use him. You can't control him."

"Linkara could."

"He **can't**. Please, I **need** you to trust me on this one."

Critic closed his eyes, remembering the terrified voice on the phone, the room painted in shades of red.

"Trust me," he pleaded again, "Let Insano loose and someone is going to up hurt."

_'Or dead. Probably dead.'_

When he opened his eyes he found himself high above Chick, hat just brushing the ceiling. He stayed where he was, because his sister was smiling her little girl smile, the one that promised retribution.

"Give me some time. I'll figure it out," she said, and Critic shuddered because that sounded like a promise.

There was things he could have told her, but he knew they wouldn't temper the greed in her eyes. She had a talent for hearing only the things that suited her, and she would have taken the story as proof that Insano could do all she asked. "The only one who **can** control him is **Spoony**, and only because he doesn't let him **out**."

"That just means the only thing keeping Spoony **in** is Spoony. If Insano's as good as you say he is, he could pop that lock anytime he wanted to."

Chick's tone was smug, self-satisfied. Here was proof that Spoony was too dangerous to keep, and she patted his leg in conciliation, apologizing for seeing what he'd missed.

But Critic shook his head, a little bitterness creeping in to make his laughter high and reedy.

"Don't you think I know that already?"

* * *

><p>He explained it to Chick as best he could, why he chose to trust Spoony still with this one thing.<p>

Did his best to make her understand that Spoony was too afraid of Insano to risk using him to gain freedom. Because Spoony knew, better than anyone, just how little the alter let get in the way when it came to science.

But in the end he had to admit he had no choice. There was no keeping Spoony if on some level Spoony did not consent to being kept. That he had stayed within his walls thus far was proof that on some deeper level the man knew himself guilty.

She dismissed him then, and he retreated from her anger with his head bowed. Ignored her command to eat and instead went back to the systems room to check in with Snob, so he might learn how far they'd gotten in stocking the bedrooms and mess.

It was curious, that Molossia had been built with a lock down system that cut off her guards from those they were meant to protect. Critic knew he'd breathe easier when they were no longer vulnerable to this flaw in their own security.

The door to the systems room stood open.

Yawned wide when it should have been shut, should have locked, and how was Critic meant to trust in the others if even this simple rule was disregarded?

_'He'd slept while on duty, a far more dangerous lapse, but he couldn't let think of that. It was just another failure to add to the list, another fuck up.'_

Snob at least was where he was supposed to be, but the screen he studied showed files and spreadsheets instead of rock and sand. Mickey's tie was still pinned to the wall, threadbare and stained, and didn't that mean anything anymore?

Didn't Snob **care**?

He wanted to scare the man, wanted to make him remember how fear felt. So Critic crept close, feet an inch from the floor, hands up and ready to clasp them tight around Snob's neck.

But then Snob cleared his throat in a soft sound of confusion, and his typing stuttered to a stop.

And even before Critic glanced back up at the monitor he knew what Snob had found. A change made less than a week ago, and he'd hoped it would take just a little longer for the other man to discover it.

Hoped that Snob never would, because that would have meant Critic was wrong. Would have meant there was trust between them still.

He'd so badly wanted to be wrong.

"Next time, lock the fucking door," he said, "What are you working on?"

He expected Snob to jolt, to scramble to click on a different file or try and block Critic's view of the flashing box that warned of an incorrect password.

But Snob only swatted at Critic in weak reprimand for the surprise, then moved aside.

"Something's wrong with the system. I was **trying** to open Spoony's door for Tom, but I'm locked out."

Critic smiled as best he could when his face felt tight and strange. "I thought you had his toilet set up? It isn't time for a shower yet."

"No, Linkara called down and said The Bum farked up the room pretty good," Snob explained, "Tom was going to take Spoony to get washed up...I told him to stash him in Benzaie's room after until they shovel things out."

He made it all sound so reasonable. Critic folded his arms behind his back to hide his clenched fists, nails biting into the soft flesh of his palms. It was soothing, that little hint of pain, something to focus on instead of the deeper ache in his chest.

"You should have called me, Snob. We talked about this...you're only supposed to let him out if there's an emergency."

He might still have trust that Spoony would not unleash Insano on his friends, but he was not the only threat within the man. To let him wander the halls would mean letting SWS and Lantern wander with him.

"You needed a break." As if Snob had been doing Critic a **favor** by justifying his doubts, as if it had been a **kindness** to rip away the last of his illusions. "Wait...are you saying you shut me out on purpose?"

"Did you check to make sure Linkara was telling the truth? Did you change the settings on Benzaie's door so he can't just walk out?"

Snob flushed bright, and Critic knew he hadn't done those things, hadn't even thought to do them. Poor Snob, still trapped in the fantasy that they were safe despite the blood mottled tie above his head.

"Critic, I can't...I **won't** treat Linkara and Spoony like they're the enemy. Maybe that makes me a pussy, but they don't deserve it."

"Mickey didn't deserve to die," Critic said, "And none of us deserved to have bombs dropped on our heads. Life isn't fucking fair, Snob. Shit happens, and the best we can do is deal with it."

Snob shook his head, but Critic did not feel the rage he'd expected. He felt simply numb, pleasantly so, and now his smile was genuine and gentle.

"I know. It's hard to make those kind of decisions."

"Impossible," Snob agreed, which only proved just how little he understood.

"Here." Critic nudged the other man a little further to the side and took his place at the computer. "Let me make it easier."

It took only a few clicks of the mouse, a half dozen typed commands. Snob had always been better with the system, but Critic knew enough for this. A touch of his hand to the reader finished it, the computer's beeped acknowledgment drawing a gasp from Snob.

"Did you just..."

Critic shrugged. "You don't want to make decisions? Now you can't, so don't worry about it. It isn't like you need access anyway...not if you trust me. And you **do** trust me, don't you Snob?"

He drew it out, made it soft and pleading. And it was easy, stupidly so, to have Snob nodding before he could think better of it. "Of course. But Critic..."

"Good, then that's settled." Critic pulled Snob up from the chair, turned him round and gave him a little push toward the door. "Why don't you head on down to lunch. I'll take care of things here and get Spoony and Linkara straightened out."

And Snob shuffled forward, docile as Spoony after a transformation, his cheeks pale even for this sunless place. He made it almost to the door before he turned, biting his lip before blurting the question.

"Critic...why?"

And Critic knew by the fear in his eyes that Snob had spotted his other little change. He should have considered what else would be revealed before changing the access levels in front of the other man, but the damage was done.

He touched the cord around his neck. The remote made a small bulge under his shirt, a tiny thing but heavy for its size. "For when we lose."

"We won't..."

"We will," Critic said, "Maybe not for years, but sooner or later, we will. They can take Molassia, but I won't let them keep her."

Snob drew a deep breath. He still looked frightened, and Critic couldn't quite grasp why, though he'd kept it a secret because he'd expected this reaction. What could be more glorious than going out with a bang?

"Look, it's not something I'm **planning** on. I don't know about you, but I don't want to give the bastards the satisfaction."

And Snob exhaled and his shoulders settled, because it was a pretty thought. Critic laughed to think of it. The ground shaking, the walls crumbling, the canyon folding it on itself...there was comfort in it. There would be that moment, when the raiders would think they had conquered, that they had **won**...

And then the sky would fall, and Molossia would be theirs forever.


	31. Chapter 31

Later Chick smiled at him, told him with amusement of Snob's flailing attempts to make sense of how quickly things had changed.

"He's not going to keep quiet," she said, "You need to talk to them."

Critic nodded, but he was weary now, rocking back in his chair to rest his feet on the console. "Soon," she pressed, and he waved a hand in slow agreement.

He considered it, what to say, the right words to wrap it in. He would be asking more of them than he had thus far...more trust, more loyalty, more faith...but not more than he thought them capable of giving.

And that didn't make him proud, because their obedience was a lazy thing. Slothful, and it made it easier to hate them.

"There's something that would help," Chick said, "Give me access. That way we have a backup, and everyone's happy."

At last.

Critic had been waiting for this, not for an hour or a day, but since they took Molossia as their own. Waiting for his sister to shift the board and crown herself queen, and here was another choice that no one else would have been strong enough to make.

"I can't do that."

She gave him a moment to reconsider, to sit there with her eyes steady on his own. And the disappointment there stung so much more than her anger, but that was Chick. She'd always know just how to hurt him, the best angle to drive in the knife.

But this was his job, his role. To weigh the risks, and to give Chick access to the computer, to the front door, was far too great a risk to take. She would open it, would let strangers in and assume she could control them. Give Chick access to Spoony, and she would tempt him, twist him, until Insano rose.

_'It's your own fault, sister. I **know** you, know how badly you want **more**.'_

"You're shutting me out," she said, and they both knew she wasn't referring to the computer.

He slid out of his chair, knelt there with his head bowed, swaying forward to rest his forehead against her.

But she wasn't there, was stepping back, arms crossed, denying him even this much. "You're shutting **me** out," she said again, and he felt the disbelief and shock shiver through his own body, drew his arms close in a desperate attempt to settle his shaking.

"No," he moaned, "How could I? I'm **you**. You're **me**."

_'And that's why.'_

Why he knew her so well, so completely. She shored him up where he was weak, he ground her down where she was honed to a cutting edge.

He could remember her coming home with cash in hand and a man's blood on her cheeks, and he'd fallen in love with her then, when they were just young.

Not for the blood, not for her strength, but for the pain in her eyes, the pain only he could see. And she'd made him a gift of it, her pain, striking out and trusting him to take it, to **keep** it for her so she could go back out again at dusk.

In return he'd given her everything.

As he did now, showing his submission with the nape of his neck, the tears in his eyes. Wanting only what he had always wanted, to be **hers**.

"Then you'll give me access," she said, and it wasn't a question.

But he remembered other things too. Ma-Ti's rattling cough, the blood that slicked his chin. The crunch of Mickey's skull, the hammering shock.

Insano, with his white coat and spiral goggles. His screaming laugh. Spoony's voice on the phone, begging Critic to come and quickly, because he didn't know where he was, didn't know what he'd **done**...

"I can't."

Because responsibility, responsibility was all or nothing. Responsibility came before everything, even his friends, even love. Before his sister, and he knew already that she would never forgive him for it.

He braced for a blow, readied himself to be hurt. But she did far worse than anything he could have imagined, and there was no preparing for it, this evisceration, this **cut**.

Her hand slid free. She stood there, silent, considering him, huddled up and making himself small. For her, always for her, making himself less so she could be more.

All that on offer, and she turned her back.

She walked away.

* * *

><p>They sat together on the floor. Surrounded by wealth, dwarfed by the shelves that rose around them. Guns, food, clean sheets.<p>

Everything they had lost. Everything they had been promised.

"He laughed," Snob said, and it was this out of everything that he couldn't let go of, could only repeat in the soft mutter of a bewildered child. "He laughed."

"We have to tell the others," Linkara said. If only to rub their noses in it, this proof that **Spoony** wasn't the dangerous one.

But Snob was shaking off his shock, straightening up and meeting Linkara's eyes for the first time that evening. "He's not...he has his reasons. He wouldn't hurt us."

It was all Linkara could do not to punch him again. "For Funk and Wagnall's sake man, choose a side. Do you really still trust him? With **this**?"

"I don't."

They both tried to turn, made clumsy by their cramping muscles, wavering about on their knees. Chick stepped around a corner and plopped down beside them, wasting no time on grace.

"He's locked me out too. I tried to tell him it would better to have a backup, just in case, but he wouldn't listen."

And now she was the one laughing, high and **broken**. Trying so hard to look hurt, but Linkara could see the rage in her, burning brighter than anything Lantern had aspired to.

"Fuck," Snob said, and Chick nodded.

"Yeah."

* * *

><p>They didn't get a chance to tell the others because Critic did it for them.<p>

He called to a meeting over the intercom, but when they came to the mess Critic's chair stood empty. It was only his face that looked down at them from the monitor on the wall, the monitor they'd long ignored because they'd never had cause to use it.

The camera was not kind to him. A cluster of pimples bloomed across his forehead and the wrinkles were carved deep around his bloodshot eyes. He looked distorted, foreshortened and jaundiced, the skin stretched taught and frail across his cheekbones.

He told them of his conversation with Snob, with Chick. Explained his reasoning, how one was too weak for such responsibility, the other too ambitious.

Though those weren't the words he used, being far too diplomatic for it, but the others heard what lay beneath more tactful choices and nodded, because they knew their friends and their flaws.

And Linkara felt the same reluctant admiration that he had that last day in the bunker, when Critic had rushed them on when it would have made more sense to wait, to lay low and gather supplies. All so they wouldn't have time to think, to hesitate.

Levitation was a parlor trick. Critic's real power had been a part of him long before the Fall. To pull them together, and to pull them on when they faltered. Even if it meant sacrifice, even if it meant exposing his best friend for a coward and his sister for a power hungry fool.

"It's just a precaution." So soothing, so reasonable. "I know we can defeat anything they throw at us. But if somehow, someday, the worst should happen...we've seen what some of them do to captives. I say if we go down, we go down on our terms. And we don't leave them a damned thing."

They didn't cheer this time, but Linkara could see it in their shining eyes, the vision of fire and fury and dust. Selfish, to destroy what they themselves had won by force. And yet...

Critic went on a bit longer, asking about the new turret and praising Snob and Linkara for getting the inventory sorted out so quickly. And then he was gone, and only a black space remained.

There was a moment of silence, stretched out and brittle, before Chick threw back her head and howled with laughter.

"He's **playing** you, you stupid fuckers. Fuck, you're such idiots."

Her disgust roused them. "He could have given someone else access," Film Brain said, "Tom, at least."

They looked to the man, still lost in grief, but **steady**. Tom nodded, a minute jerk of the head, and Linkara supposed that meant he would take the job if Critic asked it of him.

"He doesn't **want** anyone else to have access," Linkara said, "He doesn't...he's gone off, don't you see?"

Another little silence, and he could see better than half were still straddling the fence, still wanting so badly to trust in Critic, to leave their lives in his hands.

It was more than simple loyalty now. It was nostalgia, sepia colored, rose colored, all those memories crowding close.

Even Linkara could remember his first days at Channel Awesome. Remembered cringing at his desk while Critic trashed his first fumbling attempts at a review. Remembered how the others had gawked openly, and how close he'd come to quitting there and then.

It had taken him years to understand there had been kindness to it, that Critic had known his new coworkers would drag him out to the bar that night to commiserate. He'd been too shy then to approach them on his own, and this rough initiation had smoothed the way by giving him a story to tell when they set to bitching about the boss.

"She's right." Lord Kat stood slowly, crossing his arms over his chest, and it was unsettling, the posture, too reminiscent of Critic before he made a pronouncement. "We're idiots. Tell me honestly, will any of you sleep easy knowing he's wearing that **thing** around his neck?"

The silence this time wasn't silence at all. Their bodies were doing their screaming for them with the hunch of their shoulders, the widening of their eyes.

"That's what I thought."


	32. Chapter 32

Another week of whispers.

Another week of lies.

It was the inventory that kept Linkara away. The inventory and nothing more.

Not the knowledge that when he opened the bedroom door he wouldn't be sure who would be there to greet them. Would it be Spoony, or SWS wearing The Bum's torn trench coat? So many combinations, and all of them new, all of them dangerous.

Not the knowledge that Snob could no longer save them if Critic turned his back. There would be only one option then, and if it came to that death might be better than escape.

The panic attack snuck up on Linkara, had him bent double and utterly convinced he was dying. It was The Bum who held him, who patted his back with dirty hands and shoved quarters in his face, but it was **Spoony** he needed, and Spoony was not there.

_'Like you've been there for him?'_

He tried to do better, but there was so much **need** in that room, both his own and Spoony's, and the press of it only made his chest feel tighter.

Liz came calling one night with Tom at her side and dice in her hand. She bullied her way in when Spoony would have refused her, and they fought demonic fire-eaters and sword swallowers until Molossia's artificial dawn.

It helped, but even as he cheered over critical hits Linkara knew the relief was only temporary, a welcome little respite that helped him breathe easier.

He'd considered blasting it from the wall, but Critic had already warned him that destroying it would only seal the door permanently.

But sometimes he felt the energy gathering, tingling across his skin and vibrating in his fingertips. All that power had to go **somewhere**, sending him scuttling down the training range to vaporize paper targets to ash.

Another excuse to escape

Another excuse to leave Spoony behind.

* * *

><p>Another week of whispers.<p>

So Critic stayed where he didn't have to hear them, safe in the systems room with his monitors, leaving only when his own stench forced it.

He was losing the numbness he'd felt after Snob's betrayal, but what had replaced it was confusing mess of loneliness and grief, pride and guilty joy. Too much, his stomach an acid pit that balked at food.

But he forced himself to swallow, because they still needed him to be strong. Still needed **him**, despite everything he'd tried to teach them.

Such basic lessons. The cruelty of life, the unfairness. How shit could happen when you least expected it, and it was shit, a man falling from the ceiling to crush a friend's skull, the universe's idea of a knee-slapping joke.

He wasn't laughing.

But he thought, given time, he could learn.

* * *

><p>Another week of whispers.<p>

Curling around his thoughts, dragging them down and leaving him nothing.

"Spoony, wake up."

But the name had lost its meaning, its substance. It was thin now, a whisper itself, and why should he fight for something that had no **weight**?

"Spoony, wake up!"

Spoony shook off who he had been and turned to Linkara. "You're leaving," he said, because the man had that look about him. His fingers tapping against his thigh, his heels bouncing off the tiles.

"Is...is that okay? It would only be for a few hours. The..."

"...inventory," Spoony said with him, though he knew that task had been finished days ago, "Go on, then."

Linkara flinched, but Spoony wasn't angry, just resigned. "Go on," he said more softly, "You'll come back, right?"

He smiled to make it a joke, but of course it wasn't. Wasn't something he could trust, if he ever had.

Linkara kissed him, and Spoony wanted to pull him close, hold him tight. Wanted to **keep** him, but there was a fucking limit. Not just on what Linakra could give, but on what Spoony was allowed to have.

"Always. Mine?"

"Yours," Spoony agreed, but when Linkara waited he couldn't bring himself to lay equal claim.

_'Yours. Locked up all neat and tidy in a fucking cage for you, like a dog in a fucking crate. Yours, but not because you want me.'_

"Go," he said for a third time, "I'll be here when you get back."


	33. Chapter 33

The dream was always the same now.

Critic knelt in the dust, Ma-Ti's hand warm against his cheek.

He was becoming grateful for the silence, because hadn't he wanted judgment? And wasn't this judgment of a sort, evidence that Ma-Ti found him too worthless a thing to waste words on?

If only his eyes weren't kind. If only his touch wasn't so gentle. He wanted a punch, a blow to split him wide and spill out the poisons.

"Critic!"

There was no confusion, though Critic wished for it, wished he could have pretended that it was Ma-Ti speaking his name. But the voice was too young, the accent touching the vowels all wrong.

"Critic! Please, open the door!"

Critic forced himself awake and to his feet, staggering out of the chair and lifting into the air. He felt better for being weightless, but the sleep had left him cold and stupid, slow to obey the pounding at the door.

The intercom crackled again, and Critic floated over to it, punched it with his fist to cut off the plea from the other side. "**What**? " he spat out.

He'd been **asleep**.

"I wanted to talk to you," Film Brain said, and now his voice was timid and small, "If it's okay."

"No shit."

But Critic pressed his palm to the reader and released the lock. "What were you doing?" the boy asked as he edged into the room, "I was getting worried...you weren't answering."

"I'm fine."

But Critic's voice was hoarse, choked off by phlegm, and he imagined he looked as rough as he sounded. Worse, if Film Brain's snort of disbelief was anything to judge by.

"What do you need?" No one stopped by the systems room for a **chat**. They came to Critic to settle their petty feuds or to seek praise for their work. Bothersome as toddlers, and he treated them like it, admiring the new turret with the forced enthusiasm of a parent hanging the latest scrawl on the fridge.

Film Brain looked away. Bite his lip and twisted his hands, his power a heavy hum vibrating somewhere deep in Critic's chest.

"I wanted to ask...I mean...would you..."

"Out with it," Critic said, but with a smile. Still annoyed, just doing a better job of hiding it, because otherwise this was going to take all fucking day.

"I want to go outside," Film Brain said, all in a rush.

"You want to go outside," Critic parroted back, slowly, testing to see if the words made more sense from his own lips than the boy's.

He saw now how Film Brain was dressed, pale skin protected by draping cloth, twin holsters at his hips. No pack, and that was good, that meant he intended to come **back**.

"I want...I want to see them. Marzgurl and Mickey."

He was puffing up, like a kitten threatened by a dog, ready to fight for it. And Critic knew he should refuse, but he understood this. Understood the dead, how restless they could be.

"Not alone," he said, "Take Tom."

"Tom's going to watch the monitors." Film Brain gestured behind him, and it was only then that Critic saw the man hovering there in the hall, a ghost now himself without his partner. "He doesn't want...well, anyway, I thought you might want to come."

It was a surprise to Critic to find that he did. Not for the graves, but for the desert air. For the sun, for the eagles and shrubs and scorpions. To see **life**, on his way to visit the dead.

And he thought it might make it easier to stay, if he knew that he could **leave**.

"Give us an hour, Tom," he said, "Kickassia will be the code word...don't let us in if we don't say it. And keep the door to the systems room locked, okay?"

Tom nodded, then pushed past Critic.

Even with his height he had to stretch to pull Mickey's tie from the wall. He worked it from its nail with a care that bordered on reverence, and Critic had to look away, had to blink back tears of shame as much as grief.

When Tom offered the ragged thing to Film Brain, Critic stepped forward, hand open. Not a demand but a question, knowing the honor was more than he deserved.

Tom looked him over. Judged him, as he so wished Ma-Ti would.

The scrap of fabric felt cool against his palm, its ends dangling down on either side.

"Okay," Critic said to Film Brain, "Let's go give this back."

* * *

><p>The graves were unmarked, the scars in the earth long since scoured clean by the desert wind.<p>

But they felt it when they reached them, a thrum in their spines, a twist in their bellies. Critic dug a new hole with his hands, relishing the grainy feel of the dry soil.

He coiled the tie inside. Covered the faded pink of it over with red dust.

Film Brain dropped down beside him, and Critic saw his own confusion reflected in the boy's eyes.

_'Now what?'_

What does one say, to the dead? Critic had been waiting for them to speak to **him**, and he realized now how selfish a thing that was.

"I miss you."

Any another words he could have spoken would have boiled down to these three in the end. Film Brain repeated them, and when they spoke together it became a prayer, a hymn.

Mickey. Marzgurl. Sage. The Nerd. Ma-Ti. That Other Guy. Baugh.

Film Brain's mother, his sisters.

Family. Friends.

Surly teenage clerks who sneered while giving out change. Men in suits who cradled their smart phones like lovers. Screaming hellspawn in restaurants. Their wild-eyed parents.

_'I miss you. We miss you.' _

_'All of you.' _

But the enormity of it was too much to grasp. An infinity of loss, a world to mourn, so much simply **erased**. Here and then gone, and there but for the grace of...who? God? Even God was too small for this, a speck against the grief.

When they finally fell silent it was only because the desert had dried them out, wrung the moisture from their tongues and turned them thick and clumsy.

They drank deep from their thermoses, bodies jolting from the shock of cool and wet. Poured a little on each grave, a gift far more precious than flowers in this arid place.

"Thank you," Film Brain said when he could speak again, "Can we stay a little longer?"

But Critic wasn't finished.

There was something else he needed to say. Something the boy could not echo because he had not earned it.

He asked for a few minutes alone, warning Film Brain not to go far. Reminded him to keep his hand on his gun and his eyes on the horizon.

The captured heat of the sun seared him when he touched his forehead to the dust. This close he could smell it, aloe and baked earth, and he breathed in deep, filled his lungs in the hopes of burning from the inside out.

"I'm sorry," he told them, those he'd loved, those he'd failed, "I'm so sorry."

He whispered it again and again, but there was too much ground between them.

Too much time.

Too many choices.

He bent down lower, closer. The dust was turning dark, sucking greedy at his tears, but they couldn't penetrate deep enough to bring relief to the grinning skulls below.

Still whispering, but he couldn't be sure they heard, couldn't trust they understood how long he'd carried the words, like a sickness, like a cancer.

And then he was screaming it.

"I'm fucking sorry, but you asked for it, you wouldn't so I did...oh, fuck, I'm **sorry**!"

Clawing at the graves, and now the dust was dark with blood, with spit, and maybe that would be enough, enough to prove he **meant** it.

Arms closed around him. Pulled him up, held him tight. He fought, twisted and thrashed and clawed until he heard Film Brain's pained gasp, and here was another thing to apologize for.

And it was then that Critic realized there would never be an end to it. He could never make right what he owed, would only go on hurting and being hurt, and he got it now, the final joke.

_'Life is cruel, but it's **fair**. Everyone suffers. Everyone **dies**.'_

And he laughed, because it did make it easier. Made it so much easier to stay, knowing he could **leave** . There would always be a way out.

He sagged back against Film Brain, let him take some of the weight. Let himself be hugged and soothed and whispered to, at least until he understood what the boy was **saying**.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

And this was what he hadn't wanted, because those words were **his**. It hadn't been the boy who put Marzgurl and Mickey in the grave.

"Not your fault," he tried to say, but Film Brain shook his head. He twisted, and now Critic was the one sheltering him, holding the boy close while he sobbed.

"No, it is, it **is**...Mickey, but I was wrong...Snob said..."

And finally Critic understood that Film Brain was trying to apologize to **him**. He pushed him back enough to look into his face, and the boy whimpered when their eyes met. Whatever maturity he'd gained was gone, his guilt overwrought and melodramatic.

"I'm was angry," he sniveled, "I didn't mean it."

Critic pried him off when he tried to wiggle closer, held him out at arm's length and raised a parent's disappointed brow.

"Tell me," he ordered, and Film Brain did.

* * *

><p>The door to the systems was closed and locked. Critic smiled, but it was too little, too late.<p>

Snob's fingers were still busy on the keyboard even as the door slide back and he started to turn. His rhythm faltered to a stop when he recognized Critic, only to pick up again harder and faster, one final act of defiance.

"What are you working on?" Critic asked, as he had before.

And as before Snob didn't try to hide the screen, his treachery, just sighed and let his hands fall away.

"You know," he said, and Critic nodded.

"I'm sorry," Snob offered, as if those words had worth.

But Critic nodded again, granting him that much if nothing else. "Who else was in on it?"

"No one."

A lie, but one Critic had expected it. He figured Linkara was a safe bet. Tom, of course, though he'd thought the man too placid for it.

"Now what?" Snob asked.

Critic considered him. Tried to see in him the friend he had trusted, and found it wasn't hard.

Fucking nostalgia.

"Critic...don't do anything you'll regret." His sister, and Critic wasn't surprised to have her so suddenly at her back. Her hand settled against his shoulder, but the touch only reminded him of Ma-Ti, and how easy it would be to lose her too.

"Snob, come with me," he said.


	34. Chapter 34

They were already huddled in the mess when Critic called for a meeting.

They knew then that **he** knew, though his tone was not angry, just cold. They pulled in closer, Joe's hand on Larios's shoulders, Paw's fingers entwined in Benzaie's coarse fur.

The monitor flickered to life. And that wasn't a surprise, because of course Critic wouldn't face them in person, not for this, whatever it was that he'd done.

He told them how Snob had been caught red-handed, how there had been no question of guilt, only motive. But Snob had been stubborn in his silence, had chosen the wastelands over explaining himself to his friends.

"It was his choice," he finished, and if Critic had been there in the flesh Linkara would have ended it, would have torn the man apart with a blast of fierce light.

There would have been no choice. Only Critic's gun at Snob's back and the desert sun on his face.

"I know this had taken everyone by surprise." But there was a smirk there, just for an instant, as if Critic knew damn well their shock was rehearsed. "And no one is more devastated than I am."

And this Linkara could believe, and it sickened him. Critic's eyes were dry, but there was pain there, soul deep, a hole through the man that exposed how he bled.

"But Snob...he's always been different. Too smart for his own good. Maybe he thought he could do a better job than I have. Hell, maybe he was right. Does anyone agree?"

They shook their heads, because Critic was smiling, smiling with his eyes so dark and empty, and that wasn't a face they could trust, not anymore.

Wasn't a face they knew.

Critic nodded, solemn, so graciously accepting of their faith. "Right then. So, if I were to find anyone else tinkering around and getting into things they have no business with...well, I'll be forced to assume they weren't really one of us at all. After all, I'm sure there are shape shifters out there. It makes sense, doesn't it?"

They nodded again, bobble heads on leashes, and the worst part was that it **did** make sense. Hadn't they all wondered, now and again, hadn't they whispered secrets to each other, middle names, childhood pets, code words to use as proof of identity?

"And if we **were** to be infiltrated, if we couldn't even be sure of each other, I think we can all agree there's only one thing to done."

Critic spread his hands wide, thrust up his palms, wiggled his fingers. Miming an explosion, and they could see it, the rocks and fire, and it wasn't beautiful anymore, wasn't a comfort. Because now they couldn't trust when it would come, couldn't trust that when it did it would be for the right reason.

And Critic went on smiling.

* * *

><p>Snob had been the last to give in, the last to give up.<p>

And they'd waited, because they could whisper, they could plan, but they couldn't act. Not until everyone agreed on the need for it. It was a matter of solidarity, of knowing they stood side by side, back to back. A way to convince themselves it wasn't betrayal.

Couldn't be, if everyone was in on it.

And for **Snob** to falter, that **meant** something. He was Critic's friend, and when he came to them, when he laid out what he meant to do, it was a tipping point.

"Why now?" Linkara had asked him. Because Spoony hadn't been enough, or the broadcasts, or even Snob's own fall for grace.

And Snob had spoken of the long walk across the desert, of his head bent close to Critic's, the map a promise in their hands.

"I guess I realized I can't get that back. He's not that man anymore."

Chick had nodded, no longer hiding her anger but still smirking, her smile a rictus thing of habit. "He's my twin. I love him. But I don't **know** him anymore."

"I won't hurt him," Snob said, and Chick had slapped him for it.

"No one hurts my brother but me." She'd looked around to make sure the rest of them got the message, hands on her hips instead of her gun. And somehow that made her seem more threatening, her confidence that she required no weapons to bring them to their knees. "We just need to make sure we have access if we need it. If Snob can pull it off, Critic will never even known."

So they'd talked instead of whispered. They'd needed Critic out of the systems room, a difficult thing to accomplish when the man preferred marinating in his own filth to leaving someone else in control.

So Film Brain would distract Critic, and Tom would reassure him Molossia was in safe hands. Linkara would give Tom an excuse to leave by calling him to help with Spoony.

And then it would have been up to Snob. To wrest back control, to bypass the passwords and build them a backdoor into the system.

They'd even preened, a little, proud of the elegance of it, and where had it all gone wrong?

Phelous asked that very question as soon as the monitor went dead. "How the fuck did he find out?"

The static tickle of rising power gave them the answer even before Film Brain spoke.

"I'm sorry," he said, the words garbled through his tears, "You didn't...you didn't **see** him. He was screaming at them to forgive him, like it was his fault, like **everything** was his fault. And it's **not**."

"You little shit." Lord Kat was struggling for rage, his fists only half-clenched. Joe got as far as rising to his feet and taking a step toward the boy before giving it the effort with a curse.

And what had they expected, anyway? Film Brain had hated Critic, but that didn't mean he'd stopped loving him.

Film Brain swallowed back his sobs and found the courage to look them in the eye. "Snob...he's dead, isn't he?"

_'I killed him, didn't I'_ was the real question.

"Possibly," Lord Kat said, and scowled at his own tone, so gentle and coaxing, "Probably. If Critic didn't do the job himself, the desert will."

And there wouldn't even be a grave to pay respects to. Linkara stood, sending his chair skidding back with the force of it. Stalked to the wall and threw his fist against it.

It hurt, but he couldn't say it helped.

Film Brain sobbed one last time, then wiped his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

And the thrum of power faded as the boy raised his chin in invitation. He flinched as he waited for it, his punishment, hands balled tight in his lap.

"Fuck," Joe mumbled after a tense moment or two, "It ain't no fun hitting you if you make it easy."

"I tried to stop him," Chick told them.

"What do we do now?" Film Brain whispered.

"Oh," Larios said, "I'm pretty sure we're done."

* * *

><p>"Open the door, brother."<p>

Critic been expecting this, expecting her. It was a relief to obey, to let her bite and scratch and make him hers again.

When she was done with the punishment she turned to praise. Calling him _'good'_ and _'strong'_ and _'noble'_, and though he was none of those things Critic did not argue.

"I know," she said, "I know it was hard. But the more I think about it...he would never have listened. He always thought he knew better than we did..."

It crept over him slowly, a terrible pride that made him gag. Critic pulled back so quickly he left Chick with her arms spread wide, but she smiled still, pretending not to notice how he trembled.

She pulled his pipe from some hidden pocket, offering it up like a treat. A reward, for banishing his friend.

Critic opened his mouth for it, let the bitterness of old wood chase away the taste of bile.

"Ask me a question," he said.

And spoke again before she could, the words coming more easily then he'd expected.

"Ask me about the look in Snob's eyes when I handed him a pack and opened the door. Ask me how I'm meant to let you touch when every time I blink that's all I see.

"Ask me, sister, how I'm meant to let you love me?"


	35. Chapter 35

They sat silent in the mess for hours, staring at each other, waiting for one among them to offer up a plan.

When they finally dispersed it was in pairs and trios, seeking what comfort they could from the company.

Linkara followed Liz and claimed his spot beside her on her bed. Just a habit now, to sit and speak to her to things lost.

"I'm sorry," she said, "I know Snob was your friend."

**Was**, not **is**, and the shock of the difference hit him hard.

"I wouldn't have called us friends." But he understood now, how an ally could be something more, not less, that choosing a side had meant choosing each other. "He knew the risk, but I don't think...he never believed that Critic would **hurt** him."

Linkara almost hoped it had been quick. Death instead of exile, more humane than leaving Snob to walk away with betrayal weighing him down. He wondered if Snob had begged, if Critic had apologized before he shook his head.

And then he laughed, because this was Critic.

**Of course** he'd apologized.

The laughter segued so easily into tears that at first he took his own sobs for chuckles. And surely this too was betrayal, that the guilt, the grief, wasn't all for Snob, that even now Linkara would waste his tears on Critic.

_'He was screaming at them to forgive him, like it was his fault, like **everything** was his fault. And it's **not**.' _

He wept himself dry while Liz whispered little platitudes, and it was so easy to weep here, with her. There was no shame to it, like there would have been with Spoony. Liz needed nothing from him, but Linkara needed something easy, something simple.

* * *

><p>It was such an easy thing, letting go.<p>

An easy slip slide down, so easy Spoony couldn't understand why he'd struggled against it for so long. There was nothing to fear after all, down in the dark.

He'd carved himself out a little place, cozy and warm, deep enough to escape the whispers but not the emotions. And that made it perfect, made it **safe**.

When Black Lantern threw himself against the walls, Spoony could let himself drift, let the frustration wash over him without adding fear of his own.

And there was so much he hadn't known about anger before he'd allowed himself to **feel** it. He'd thought rage and anger were the same, but there were shapes to it, degrees. It could be sullen or righteous, flare hot or burn cold.

Later, when their fists were aching and bloody, it was The Bum's turn. To snivel and whine and wish for a cuddle, and even that was a revelation. There was no one there to kiss away their hurts, but that made it easier to admit to the weakness, to admit he missed being kissed, being loved.

Later still, when it was clear Linkara meant to stay away the night through, SWS came out to play.

And why oh why hadn't someone just **told** Spoony that it didn't always have to be about giving and taking? That pleasure in and of itself could be the goal?

He feared only one alter now, fighting against the scientist whenever he tried to break free. The battles meant seizures, but better that than risk unleashing the scientist on the rest. It still mattered to him, that they were kept safe from his darker self, though there were times he struggled to remember why.

So Linkara didn't want him anymore. Then fuck Linkara.

Spoony could keep himself company just fine.

* * *

><p>Linkara woke in Liz's bed.<p>

Alone.

He yawned and stretching, trying to remember falling asleep here, so far from Spoony.

He gathered himself to leave, but Liz returned before she could, a mug of coffee substitute in each hand. He sat back when he saw her, cringing at his own unwelcome relief.

They sipped their coffee for a bit, until Linkara felt his sluggish brain wake.

"Sorry about taking up your bed," he said, and expected Liz to wave off the apology.

"What are you doing, Linkara?" she asked instead.

And he blushed, because he wasn't a fool and neither was she.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I just..."

She cut him off then with a slow shake of her head. "I'm not Marzgurl," she said, as if he needed the reminder.

And maybe he did, though he regretted sharing those memories now. The sweltering nights, SWS's musk in the air, Marzgurl's knowing smirk.

He'd spared Liz the details, had only wanted her to understand who Marzgurl had been, the shape of the space she'd left behind. Sarcastic, dangerous, but generous.

But he realized now how tawdry it would have sounded, a man using a woman's flesh to slake his lust while selfishly withholding his heart. An ugly thing.

"You're not," he agreed, because Marzgurl was dead. She was bones buried deep, and for all that she'd given, what had he ever given back? "I know you're not."

Liz pulled him up, took the mug from his hands and gave him a little push toward the door.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"I know." She smiled at him, but there was something hard in her eyes, exasperation mingled with hurt. "But I'm not going to be your dumping ground. I deserve better. You've got someone who needs you, and you need him just as much. Maybe even a little bit more.

"Go home, Linkara."

* * *

><p>Spoony lay on his side. Legs drawn up, hands balled against his chest, curled in on himself like a child. He didn't stir when Linkara slipped into the room, his breathing steady and slow.<p>

"Spoony?" Linkara whispered, and felt a jolt of honest fear when the other man slept on.

He called his name again, louder. A third time, now almost a shout. Finally took him by the shoulder and shook him, not gently.

"Oh, for fuck's sake...**what**?"

Linkara faltered then, taken aback by the swell of irritation in Spoony's voice, the realization that his lover couldn't be bothered to **pretend** to be happy to see him. "You okay?

Spoony snorted at the inane question and flopped over onto his back.

"I'm peachy. You?"

He was still playing at sleep, eyes closed, face slack and still, snuggling down into a pillow gone threadbare with use.

"I'm sorry I didn't come in last night," Linkara offered, but this too was ignored. "Please, Noah, just talk to me."

Spoony sighed. Sat up and yanked Linkara down, kissing him hard and invading his mouth with a skillful twist of his tongue.

It was too sure, that kiss, too confident, SWS lurking just under the surface, and Linkara rolled free before it could go further.

"Don't," he said, "**Talk** to me."

It took that much to rouse Spoony into showing some genuine interest. He yawned, shaking off his lethargy and SWS with a grumble.

"What's wrong? Someone swipe some chicken loaf and screw up the inventory?"

The sarcasm in the question was a marvel, a match for Marzgurl at her most cutting. Linkara flinched from it and the realization that Spoony knew, had known all along.

"I didn't want to worry you," he said.

"I'm tired, Linkara," Spoony said, "Can we move this along? Whatever it is, just tell me."

So Linkara took a breath, and told him everything.

He started with the lock. The fear it roused in him, now more than ever, a crushing dread that made his chest lock tight. Escaping the room and that fear had meant leaving the better part of himself behind, and if there was courage in that it was a craven kind, like a weasel willing to snap its own neck when snared.

He told Spoony of all the things he'd missed, the things Linkara had chosen to keep from him. Finished finally with Snob's exile, and the look in Critic's eyes when he spoke of it, the way his hand had drifted up to caress the cord at his throat.

"He won't even let Chick into the systems room anymore. Things are bad. As bad as it gets, I think."

Linkara was ready for questions, would have welcomed anger.

But Spoony's eyes were lazy and half-hooded, his expression one of polite disinterest. "Sounds fucked up."

"This is your problem too," Linkara reminded him, "Do you think Critic won't do to you what he did to Snob?"

Spoony only shrugged, and Linkara didn't know how to deal with this, this brazen refusal to **care**. It was an apathy more dangerous than depression.

"Anything else?" Spoony asked.

Linkara told him then of Liz. How he'd ignored her pain over Mickey as he had ignored Critic's pain over Baugh.

"If I needed to talk, it should have been to you," he finished, "I wanted things to be easy, but I'd rather they be real."

But Spoony smiled, bright and easy, and nodded to himself.

"That's alright then. It'll make things easier if you have Liz, won't it?"

"No." Linkara didn't need to ask **what** would be easier. He jolted to his feet, moving to block the door as if Spoony might barrel through it then and there. "It wasn't like that. She said she deserves better, and she's right. She told me you were waiting for me."

But he could see that had stopped being true long ago, and what had he expected?

"I'm here **now**," he said, voice thinned to a whine by desperation, "Doesn't it count for anything, that I always came **back**?"

"I love you." It was the first time either of them had dared the words, but there was bitterness in them. "It's better this way, don't you see? It's like...like the Highlander sequels. Some things aren't meant to keep going."

Linkara surprised himself by laughing, but it really was too much, a twisted insult piled atop injury. "Did you seriously just compare our relationship to _The Source_?"

Spoony smiled at him again, a little quirk of his lip that Linkara so wanted to kiss. But he'd lost that right, had somehow lost **everything**. He could see it in Spoony's eyes, the resolve that had crept over him when Linkara wasn't **watching**.

"I love you." Spoony spoke softly now, gently. "I couldn't take it if you hated me, and fuck, I don't ever want to hate you."

Linkara realized he was pacing only when Spoony stood and took him by the shoulders. He shuddered at the touch, so familiar now, remembering the days when this much contact had been a triumph.

"It's time to let it go, Lewis."

Linkara sagged forward and let Spoony gather him close. "Do this for me," Spoony whispered in his ear, "You owe me that."

"If you want to leave, that's fine," Linkara said against the other man's chest, "But I'm coming with you."

A flicker, and it was Lantern in his arms.

Always before Linkara had trusted that the alters would not hurt him. But if Spoony had earned his freedom, Linkara had earned pain. He closed his eyes, ready for the white shock of fangs closing on his throat.

And it wasn't enough when Lantern used his claws instead, dragging them down Linkara's back to tear through cloth and flesh. They howled together, and then Lantern wrenched free and fell to his knees.

"Bastard," he said, and it was Spoony's voice. "You can't make me responsible for that. Oh, you fucking bastard, Lewis, this is what I didn't want."

_'I don't ever want to hate you.'_

"I'm sorry," Linkara said, folding down beside him, "I love you. I'm sorry."

Such an awful thing, to find himself apologizing for love.

How long did they kneel there, bloody and wrenched? "I'm yours," Spoony said at last, no longer a declaration of pride but a statement of defeat.

"That's not why," Linkara said, "It's because I'm **yours**."


	36. Chapter 36

For a week they held their breaths. Picked their words carefully, never knowing which of them might be goodbye.

But slowly they settled, as people will. Hour by hour, day by day, they relaxed a little more.

It was amazing, what one could learn to live with.

It only made it harder when Critic insisted on holding daily meetings, looking down from the monitor in the mess with the eyes of a parent desperate to keep his children safe.

"Sleep in shifts," he told them, "Two people should be awake and patrolling the halls at all times."

Or

"Set a curfew. After ten, anyone who leaves their room better have a damn good explanation."

They obeyed, and not just to placate the man.

"I'd feel better if he didn't make so much sense," Lord Kat said once ,"If he'd rant a little, or drool. **Something** to remind us he's a batshit insane little motherfucker."

Still, they gathered each night far from the mess. The failure of their first grand plan made it hard to work up enthusiasm for another, but they forced themselves to try.

Only to be defeated again and again by the first step.

Open the door.

Since the night of Snob's exile, Critic had kept himself isolated in the systems room. Sealed away behind thick steel with their death at his throat, safe from attack and their judgment.

"Just rip it off the hinges, Tom. What's the fucking problem?" Joe asked now.

"That's a fantastic idea! It's not like we need to be **quiet** about it or anything. I'm sure Critic won't press his little red button when he hears **that**," Linkara said, then mimed slow realization. "Oh, wait..."

Desperation kept them circling around to the same unworkable schemes, but Linkara had little patience left for tail chasing. Every hour they spent arguing was another hour Spoony spent alone.

"Shut it," Joe grumbled, "You got any better suggestions?"

"I can tell you won't work. Phelous can't cut through it. I can't blast it down. It'll just set off the alarm, and without Snob we can't try the override. So no, no suggestions, but wasting our time isn't helping."

"This isn't right." Chick's smile had flipped over into a pouty little frown that made her look younger than her years. "This isn't how things were supposed to happen."

They laughed at the understatement, and when the laughter died so did the meeting. Paw began to hum, a slow dirge that Linkara recognized from one of the Silent Hill games.

"Yeah," Larios said, "I hear that."

* * *

><p>For Critic, time did not pass hour by hour, day by day. There were only seconds, minutes, life slowed to a lethargic crawl.<p>

Snob's betrayal had shown him the folly of allowing the others access to the systems room. He kept his watch alone, his own breathing loud in his ears.

Yet not alone after all, for the computer was a worthy partner. Immune to sentiment, doing as it was asked and never less, never more. Critic had turned the sensors, all of them, to their most sensitive levels, had given charge of the turrets over to circuits and wires.

The lower settings had allowed for human discretion in judging a coyote from a man who wore a coyote's skin, but Critic had a new rule now, one that eliminated such needless risks.

If it moved, it died.

Zull, Motherfucker's pup had succumbed to the first barrage, his mate to the second. Critic forced himself to watch without flinching, but deep within he was glad the foxes had never been named. A few days of bullets and blood, and the small desert creatures learned to avoid the canyon.

Now the monitors looked out over a barren, pockmarked land, and Critic was left to spin in his chair for the novelty of dizziness. It occurred to him that this was what he had given Spoony, this **waiting**, and his own cruelty chilled him.

But as the seconds, the minutes passed, Critic found it easier to sleep, if not to wake. The sickening pride and anger he'd felt in exiling Snob had faded to a clean and uncomplicated grief.

He took comfort in that and in his lessons, so hard won.

Nothing lasts forever.

This too would end.

Not by Critic's hands, and not quite yet. But the others were almost ready, to do what needed to be done.

He wouldn't make it easy for them. They would be given one chance to prove themselves and show they could handle the hard decisions without him there to hold their hands.

_'Not quite yet,' _he thought, _'But soon._

_"Please, let it be soon.' _

* * *

><p>"Wait."<p>

The others had already begun to drift away when Phelous called them back.

Linkara hovered near the door, fists clenched in fury at this delay. He needed to get home. Home to Spoony, to the stranger he loved, the man with kaleidoscope eyes.

Even the alters looked upon him with something like suspicion now. Linkara would wake in the night with SWS at his side, but there would be no wandering hands to fend off, no dark promises whispered in his ear.

The bedroom had become a lonely place, but to stay close was the only proof of devotion Linkara had to offer, for what little it was worth. But every day there was a little less of Spoony to hold onto, and Linkara missed him with a dark and bitter ache.

They met now in the inventory room, surrounded by their ill-gotten bounty. Phelous stood near Baugh's altar, covered still by a sheet with dust gathering in its folds.

"I have an idea," he said, and out of them all turned to Linkara, "But you aren't going to like it."

He was right.

* * *

><p>"No," Linkara said, and that should have been enough.<p>

And he growled when it wasn't, wishing he had Lantern's fangs to put some threat behind his snarl.

"**No**."

"You're the one who keeps saying we can't use force," Joe reminded him, "So we don't. We use something else."

_Science_.

"You don't understand," Linkara said, and knew that it was true, knew they never had, even in the days when they'd cared enough to try. "And Spoony...he's not doing well. He's not...he's not a **weapon**. You don't get to take him out when it's time to **use** him."

"Linkara..."

Chick drifted close, and if she tried to touch him, if she smiled, Linkara was going to something he would later regret.

But she kept her hands to herself, and when she spoke it was plainly, without saccharine pleas.

"He'd be saving himself too. What else is there?"

"No," Linkara said again, "I won't let you break him."

Because he'd done that already, with his lies and his love.

He could feel his power rising to twine hot around his fingers, and knew the others had spotted the green glow when they took a step back. "You can't ask this of him. You just don't get it."

They'd never witnessed Insano at work, at play. Had never stood beneath a fall of burning feathers and smelled the ozone scorch of a laser.

"He's right. This isn't fair."

Benzaie.

The bear shuffled forward to stand at Linkara's side. Rose up to brandish his claws, and in that moment Linkara forgave him his sins.

"Thank you," he whispered, and saw Benzaie's ear flick in quick acknowledgement.

"Without Snob, he's our only shot at hacking the system," Lord Kat said, as if Linkara simply hadn't understood.

"And I'm not saying he couldn't do it," Linkara answered, "I'm saying there's no way to control **what else** he'd do."

"Couldn't you help him?" Liz asked, and at least from her the question was an honest one. She knew only SWS, The Bum, Lantern. Dangerous in their way, but they could be coaxed. Controlled.

But it still cut that she would ask, still felt like betrayal. "Not with this," Linkara said, "Not anymore."

Still they were not convinced. Linkara could see it in their eyes, hear it in their huffing sighs.

"We abandoned him." Benzaie spoke softly now, dropping to four paws and bowing his head low. "We can't expect him to sacrifice himself to save our own skins. Not after that."

They looked away then, and Linkara was quick to take advantage of their shame.

"He wouldn't be able to come back. There's not enough **left**. Leave the man alone...it's the absolute least you can do, and you've had plenty of practice."

He spun then, gesturing for Benzaie to follow with a careless flick of his wrist. Strode from the room with powerful strides, all too aware of how his coat billowed out behind.

If he'd learned one thing from his treasured comics, it was how to make an exit.

* * *

><p>Benzaie followed Linkara through the halls, trotting at his heels like an oversized dog. Behind them both came Tom, as Linkara had known he would.<p>

Critic sounded distracted when he answered the intercom, disengaging the lock with only a token question or two. His duty done, Tom stepped back.

Linkara was on him before he made it far, hugging him lamprey style, all frenzy and clinging.

"Thank you," he said against the man's back, "If I never said it before, **thank you**."

Because Tom could have made things so much harder. Could have disappeared into his grief, refused to vouch for Linkara's comings and goings. He was their jailer but also their friend, and Linkara knew better than to take that for granted.

Tom went still. Sighed soundlessly when Linkara refused to take the hint. Finally cracked enough to grunt a protest, and how could Linkara resist squeezing him that much tighter?

At last Tom reached back and plucked him up by the collar. Linkara flailed as he was set down out of hugging range, squawking at the indignity of being manhandled so easily.

"Really, thank you!" he called after Tom's retreating back, but the man moved with impressive haste. He stopped far down the hall, hovering there while he waited for them to enter the bedroom.

Benzaie chuffed a laugh, but he sobered when Linkara curled his hand around the door knob.

"Just...move slowly. Be careful," Linkara told him.

It fell somewhere between a plea and a warning. Linkara could have gone in first, could have asked Spoony if he even had interest in seeing the bear again. Could have given him control over that much at least.

Probably should have.

But he knew Spoony would refuse, and not because Benzaie had turned his back. He had never blamed the bear for that, had never blamed any of them for seeing him locked away. He would hide because he was ashamed of what he had become and, cruel as it was, Linkara wanted Benzaie to see how far Spoony had fallen.

The holes in the walls from Lantern's fists. The garbage piled high. The sex stench rising from the stiffened sheets.

He wanted Benzaie to see the truth so he might persuade the others that if Spoony was a weapon, he was a broken one, too dangerous to chance using.

"Ready?" Linkara asked Benzaie, and didn't wait for an answer before swinging the door wide.


	37. Chapter 37

Critic was dreaming, but not of Snob.

And that was cruel, the empty space at Ma-Ti's side. There were so many things Critic wanted to tell his friend, his enemy.

Not that he was sorry. Snob knew that already, had walked out into the desert with Critic's apologies chasing behind.

Critic wanted to tell him how he'd admired his strength, the fortitude it must have taken to watch E.T. writhe and moan. How his favorite reviews were the ones where Snob's cat ran wild. How his voice had roused a low heat in Critic's belly.

"Tell me I was wrong," he begged Ma-Ti, "Tell me I'm a bastard, that I've ruined it all."

Ma-Ti shook his head.

And **spoke**.

"You're a bastard and you've ruined it all. Does that make you feel better?"

"And I was wrong," Critic urged, "Tell me I was wrong."

"Oh, you were wrong. You done fucked up good, partner."

Critic didn't remember sinking down, but there he was with his knees in the mud. And it was glorious, so much better than standing tall.

"Yes..."

A hiss, drawn out and tortured by more pleasure than pain. An awful ecstasy, to be at last judged and found wanting. A match for the delicious agony when Chick found a rhythm with a paddle, taking him down down down until he wasn't anywhere anymore.

"Oh, for..." Ma-Ti took Critic's chin in hand, wrenching his head up and trying to force him to meet his eyes. "You're one sick puppy, you know that?"

But then his hand turned gentle, patting Critic's cheek with a butterfly touch before settling on his shoulder. Handling him so kindly, and that wasn't what Critic wanted at all.

"Remember," Ma-Ti told him, as if Critic did anything **but**, "Remember who you are."

"I'm not Spoony. I don't get to be anyone but who I am."

He'd said the same to Linkara once, but what had been mocking then was plaintive now. Ma-Ti smiled down, wiping away Critic's tears with his thumbs.

"**Look** at me."

It was too soft to be an order, but still Critic obeyed.

And recoiled, breath hitching on a snob, a scream, because there was no anger there. Only love, and it burned, oh it burned, a bright heat searing him to the bone.

"Don't!" He was whining like a child, but for all Chick had done, all he had allowed her to do, he'd never known a pain this terrible. "Please, please don't! Don't love me!"

Still Ma-Ti smiled, sinking down beside Critic. And that was wrong, so very wrong, that they should be on the same level.

"Remember who you are," Ma-Ti said again, "Remember when you were loyal. Remember when you were strong."

But wasn't this loyalty, wasn't this strength? Everything he'd done, he'd done for them, and he'd asked for nothing in return save their hatred.

"This is what I remember." Ma-Ti leaned in close, sharing the secret in a low whisper. "We hadn't spoken for two years when you found me on Facebook. You had the videos, you had the hits, but you couldn't figure out where the money was. I'd never produced a damn thing in my life, but there you were, offering me a job and trying to convince me I'd be good at it. Turned out you were right...I wasn't just good, I was great. Things kept getting bigger and better, and then we started headhunting. Who was the first, Critic?"

When Critic was slow to answer Ma-Ti slapped him, a light tap of the fingers, not nearly enough.

"Snob."

But of course Ma-Ti knew that already. Was this to be Critic's punishment, these memories? Because Critic had forgotten **nothing**.

Sending out the first e-mail, the thrill of getting a response. Snob's nervous smile and too-firm handshake. Trying so hard not to lose his shit because Ma-Ti had warned him to act like a professional. Failing spectacularly by spilling a pot of coffee in his own lap.

"I thought he was going to choke, he was laughing so hard," Critic shared, smiling despite himself, "I had second degree burns on my dick."

"There." As there was some great revelation to be found in such visions of the past. "Do you remember how it was, how they stood for you and you stood for them? What changed?"

Then. Now. Such words had lost their meaning, the past so far separated from the present that the memories, while cherished, had become meaningless.

"Everything," Critic said.

"But some things don't change. Or shouldn't. You never stopped loving them."

It was a gut punch, and it bent Critic double. Or would have, if Ma-Ti hadn't there to support him, leaving him no choice but to lean in against his shoulder.

"They never stopped loving you."

Panic gave Critic the strength to wrench free. He was scrambling away before he found the coordination to stand, but wherever he turned Ma-Ti was there, in the way of dreams. Holding Critic close, hushing him like his brother had hushed him as a child. Forcing him to look, to listen.

"Remember." His breath was warm against Critic's cold face, and hadn't anyone told Ma-Ti that ghosts were meant to be cold? "You don't get to be anyone but who you are.

"So be who you are, Nostalgia Critic

"Be you, and be sure."


	38. Chapter 38

Critic watched them while they ate, his own beef brisket congealing slowly into grease and tallow.

Something was off. Some argument, with Linkara at the center of it from the way he stabbed at his meat with vicious little stabs of his fork.

Critic wished he could bring himself to care.

When the plates were stacked they turned to the monitor, waiting for instruction or release. "Report," he ordered, and listened to the usual rounds of bitching and excuses.

"Good enough," he said when they were finished, "I'm going to be making some changes over the coming weeks."

He saw the way Joe showed his teeth, the way Linkara sought Benzaie's eye with a frown, and only then did he feel sympathy. He understood too well their fears, and he supposed he'd earned it.

How much more change could they be expected to endure?

"Good change," he said, softly now, "I've been thinking."

_Dreaming_.

He didn't elaborate because he couldn't, not yet, the ideas only half-formed and slipping away when he grasped after them. But he knew now that they would never be as safe as he wanted, that death would come stalking no matter how many turrets guarded them.

If he couldn't win, he couldn't lose.

It didn't mean he could stop trying, but it did mean he didn't need to try quite so hard. He could trade a little safety to give them back a little happiness, and perhaps it would be enough to let Ma-Ti rest.

"And I still have more to think about it," he told them, "I need to figure out how to do things properly, but I think you'll be pleased in the end."

"Sounds good," Film Brain said, and beside him Jew Wario made a noise that sounded like a whimper.

"It will be," Critic said, and the hell of it was he believed his own promise. He didn't regret the things he'd done. But as necessary as they'd been, it would never been enough. They had hopes still, his foolish friends, and hope seemed too precious a thing to destroy when he had so little of his own.

"But I'm going to need a few days without distractions to work out some things," he told them, "I'm turning the coms off, but try not to burn the place down."

Critic reached out to turn off the monitor, and his fingers were on the switch when he registered Linkara's ragged shout.

"Wait!"

Caught mid-motion, Critic still pressed down. In the seconds before the screen flickered and went dark he saw Linkara rising from his seat, eyes panic wide, one hand outstretched and haloed in green.

Critic fumbled in turning the monitor back on, his own hands shaking from the shock of it, how close he'd come to betraying not one friend but two.

"Calm down," was his greeting when the image sprang back into focus, "For fuck's sake, Linkara."

They were all staring, mouths gaping wide with a surprise that made them look stupid. Critic shook his head, trying so very hard to appear disgusted by their doubt. "I'll give Tom a code, of course...I'm sorry, I should have mentioned that first, but I'm not a monster, Linkara, remember? And I'm not an idiot either, so **calm down."**

But he was. An idiot, a bastard, a fuck up, and why had Ma-Ti tried to convince him he could be anything more?

"I **am** sorry," he said as Linkara sank back into his seat, chest heaving with the adrenaline rush of fear, "Tom, I'll contact you in a bit. Linkara...do you want to head down now?"

Linkara managed a jerky nod. With luck he'd take the entire thing as a reminder of the power Critic held, and maybe that was for the best. It would help things go more smoothly in the weeks ahead, stop him from strangling himself when Critic loosened the leash.

"Later then."

Critic reached again for the switch. When it was dark and he was again alone, he stood. Walked to corner where his chemical toilet stood and let it all come up, the bile, the guilt, the mess he'd made of things even when he tried to get it **right**.

* * *

><p>For a time it was all Linkara could do to breathe. The pounding of his heart made it difficult, his ribs hitching with shallow, too-fast panting that left him lightheaded and swaying.<p>

He flinched when Benzaie's cold nose pressed against his check. There was a hand patting his back, but Linkara wasn't sure if it belonged to Liz or Film Brain. Whoever it was, they were heavy-handed in their sympathy, jolting him forward with each strike.

But slowly, slowly, he found a rhythm, a way to push the panic back.

He looked up to find the others looking back, saw his own terrible realization mirrored on their faces.

And laughed, because it was better than crying, and what else was there to do?

Critic had **forgotten**.

"Yeah," he said when he could speak again, "Yeah, okay."

* * *

><p>SWS surveyed the group with a raised brow before stepping back to allow them entry.<p>

"Well, now," he said, "This should get interesting."

But what should have been lecherous held an anxious undertone. The slow, satisfied smile was right, but the man standing before them had The Bum's nervous eyes and Lantern's curled claws. Sexuality and innocence and anger, blended together into something too tawdry to seem dangerous.

"Stay back," Linkara told the others, but he need not have bothered. They stayed huddled near the door, murmuring to each other about the state of the room and the jigsaw puzzle alter.

Linkara crowded in close, knowing he needed more than a name to draw Spoony out. But there were so many needs here, and he wasn't sure which to fill first.

"Wake up," he whispered between delicate, careful kisses, "I'm here, and I need you. Spoony, wake up."

A hand brushed his hip, and it was hard to know if that was The Bum, all unknowing, or SWS taking advantage. Linkara reached down to capture it, squeezing with enough pressure to make it clear he had no tolerance for games.

"That's enough. Spoony!"

He barely caught the man when the seizure took him. Liz was there to help lower him to the floor, pushing back the moldering mounds of garbage to make room.

It was over quickly enough, but only because as Spoony weakened so did the alters. When he was himself again Spoony staggered up, batting away their attempts to be helpful. He made it to the bed under his own power and collapsed there to sit with head in hands, glaring at them through spread fingers.

"What do you want?"

"Are you..." Benzaie swallowed back his own question, dragging a paw across the carpet like a chastised child.

"No, I'm not," Spoony answered anyway, "I'm not fucking okay, so let's not pretend otherwise. This is obviously not a social call, so what do you fuckers **want**?"

Of course it was Joe who answered, bulldozing over Linkara's stuttering to lay out the whole mad plan in one garbled burst. Linkara knew the man didn't mean to be callous, that Joe, for all his faults, had no true cruelty in him. But to hear things laid out so plainly, with no regard given to the possibility of failure, the risk of success...

Spoony laughed when Joe was done, and Linkara shivered to hear Insano in it. "That's a fucking stupid plan. And anyway...Critic...he'd doing his best."

And Linkara fell in love with him all over again for that, his scandalized horror at the idea of turning against the man who had locked him away. Despite everything, Spoony still clung to his loyalty, still wanted so badly to protect the one who had been the first to betray him.

"No," Linkara said when Joe would have leapt in to froth and foam, "He's right. Critic **is** doing his best."

He took a measured step forward, waiting for Spoony to give him permission to approach. He granted it with a nod, let Linkara reach out to take him by the shoulders.

"But we haven't been. The thing is, it doesn't matter whose fault any of this is...we just have to fix it. Critic...he's hurting, Spoony. I love him too, but that's not enough."

Because love so rarely was. Love was bad poetry, white lies, promises whispered in the dark. It was _yours_ and _mine_ and _stay, _and the greed it took to say them.

But responsibility...responsibility was so much more than love. It was a scar against his lips, fangs at his throat. It was needs, and learning how to fill them.

It was learning to let go.

"I know you," Linkara told him, "You can do this."

"Then you're a fool. Once he's out, he's out. At least Critic doesn't play with death rays."

"Critic...he is sick," Benzaie said, and Spoony grinned at that, daring them to suggest **he** wasn't.

And it was beautiful, that smirk, the spark of life glinting in his eyes. Eyes that were cobalt and indigo, ultramarine and cerulean. There were a thousand shades and shadows in those eyes, and Linkara had never wanted him so badly.

He dropped to one knee, reaching out to take Spoony's hand in his own. Heard Joe snort behind him, and knew how it must have looked. But in a way he was proposing, offering up trust instead of a ring.

"You can do this," he said again, "You don't have to, but you could if you wanted to."

Spoony shook his head, but Linkara knew it was in surprise, not denial. Linkara had always stood by his side in his struggle to contain his scientist alter, had even gone so far as to slap him when Insano threatened to rise.

"I'm not strong enough," Spoony whispered, "I don't think...I wouldn't come back."

But Linkara saw it so clearly now, the things he'd missed.

The Bum's fingers skimming down his thigh, Lantern rolling over to show his belly...he'd taken them for evidence of something gone wrong, a fracture running through to Spoony's core.

A shattering, the walls crumbling down. The Bum bleeding into SWS bleeding into Lantern bleeding into **Spoony**.

A shattering that had been long in coming, that needed to happen before rebuilding could begin.

Spoony was **healing**.

The pieces were coming together, the alters finding their place within the whole. And Linkara was honest enough to admit that it hurt, to know his absence had been the catalyst, his silence worth more than his whispered words of love.

"You're stronger," he said, "He's only one part of you. We'll do for him what we've done for the others."

_'Fill the need.' _

Spoony shook his head again, and Linkara realized with a pang that he didn't know, couldn't see how close he was to being **whole**.

He stretched up to claim a kiss. Short, dry, almost innocent, but Spoony chased after his mouth when they parted.

"Who are you," Linkara asked.

"Spoony."

But Spoony shrugged, because that answer was only for the moment. A temporary thing, the name a label and not an identity.

"So is he," Linkara said, "He's you, you're him, and no matter what, you're always **you**."

He stole another kiss when Spoony hesitated. Shifted where he knelt, glad for the position that kept the others from seeing what the taste of the man did to him. "I'll help, but you won't need it. You've never needed me. I'm sorry, for making you think you ever did."

Another kiss to keep Spoony from protesting. Harder and deeper than before, because it was enough to be **wanted**.

"Oh, just give him a blow job and let's get on with it!"

They parted, flushed and laughing, swatting at Joe until he scurried back. Spoony stood and pulled Linkara up with him.

"If I can't come back..."

Linkara closed his eyes and saw Baugh's face, the fear and guilt written there in his last seconds of life. Red against a stone, against Benzaie's white fur.

"I will," he promised, "If it comes to it, I'll take care of you."

"And if I'm going to do this, I'm doing it alone," Spoony said, "If Critic wins, don't let him know any of you were involved. Maybe he'll be happy with just taking me out instead of blowing the place up."

He leaned around Linkara then to look at Liz. "And you'll make sure this one doesn't do anything stupid. After."

But Linkara waved her off before she could answer. "I wouldn't...it was wrong, to use that against you. I'm sorry."

Spoony studied him, and it was strange for Linkara to find himself the one under scrutiny. They laughed together at the irony of it, and then Spoony was stepping back to shake out his arms.

"Okay," he said, almost to himself, "Let's do this."

* * *

><p>Spoony gestured for Linkara to move back.<p>

And it was a relief when he did, even if that meant Spoony might stumble and fall.

If only Critic had understood! If only they'd thought to warn him that his responsibility had to be to himself first, that giving until it hurt only left them all bloody.

But still, it was hard to sink down. Hard to leave Linkara behind when they'd only just found each other again.

So instead Spoony opened himself, and let Insano rise.


	39. Chapter 39

The door to the bedroom was child's play for Insano to open.

Linkara couldn't hide his unease when the lock slid back. The alter accomplished it so easily it didn't even rate a laugh, and how many times had Linkara woken shaking from nightmares of just this very thing?

Set loose in the inventory room, Insano clapped his hands in glee. Soon he sat cross-legged, surrounded by the innards of a half-dozen radios, a screwdriver clenched between his teeth.

It was **all** play to him, even this. The construction of a device meant to disable Critic if possible, but with the potential to kill him if necessary.

Device?

No, though it would have been nice to pretend. For all his genius, Insano built only to destroy. Heat-rays, micro-explosives, his signature laser guns.

Weapons.

The weapons that would have freed Spoony when he was a child, if only he'd chosen to use them. If only he hadn't loved his mother enough to stay.

Spoony endured, but when Insano played it was to **win**.

Critic had warned Linkara of Insano when he first joined Channel Awesome. He'd been vague on the details, but the message had been clear.

_'Don't approach. Don't talk to him. Don't fucking look at him. Call me and let me deal with it.' _

But Linkara hadn't understood, had thought his new boss was being his usual melodramatic self.

Until he stumbled across the alter taking potshots at the pigeons on the roof of their office building.

He wasn't being cruel. Didn't understand cruelty, because he didn't understand consequences. Insano had been the first of them, the first splintering, and would always see the world through a child's eyes.

That was what Linkara knew of Insano. Laughter, and the frantic rush of wings.

"If Critic comes at you, don't hesitate," he told the alter now, "But if you can...just try not to hurt him."

Insano wasn't listening. Too busy with his straps and wires, making himself a spiderweb gauntlet that wound around his wrist and fingers. He pulled the last buckle tight and admired his own handiwork with a hum of satisfaction.

"What does it do?" Linkara asked.

"Science!"

Insano's grin was wide, bordering on grotesque, but there was no true madness in it. He was simply happy, joyous in this moment of creation

And why? Why couldn't this pride belong to Spoony? Everyone feared powerful emotions to some extent, but Spoony had gone further. Crushing down his intellect, remaking himself as someone lesser.

And Linkara had been party to it, had helped convince Spoony his own mind was something to fear.

"Let's see it," he suggested, because how often did Insano get to show off?

The scientist raised his hand, and Linkara had just enough time to marvel at his own stupidity.

Flat on his back, ears ringing, he could only shake his head. Or try, a struggle with his muscles still twitching from the aftershocks.

Insano bent over him, upside down from Linkara's new perspective. "Well?"

"Uh...ow?"

The alter frowned. "You shouldn't still be talking," he grumbled, and set to fussing with the tiny bands circling his knuckles.

Linkara had to use the shelves to drag himself upright. "Some kind of taser?" he guessed once his vision cleared, "No! No more demonstrations. Use your words."

Insano pouted, but only briefly. He launched into a lecture on neuromuscular incapacitation, but Linkara was too enraptured by the pink flush at the alter's cheeks to pay much heed to his words.

"You're amazing."

He spoke softly, but it shut Insano up. He eyed Linkara warily, waiting for the punch line.

"You **are**. Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"

The alter ducked his head, his grin sliding into something more vulnerable. He was showing his youth with this shy pleasure at being acknowledged, and of course Linkara kissed him then. Just gently, on the high forehead, the spiral lenses of the goggles.

"If he comes at you, **do not hesitate**." Because he couldn't lose him again, this man who was Spoony and so much more. Beautiful and brilliant and broken, and Linkara's very own. "You come back, you hear me?"

"No one defeats me!" Insano said, but there was no confidence there, not while Linkara still stood so close. He tilted his head, so tentative, shaking himself to pieces when Linkara pressed their lips together.

It wasn't at all like kissing Spoony. There was no ease to Insano, just a clumsy clash of teeth that left Linkara bruised.

"Can I?" Insano whined against his lips.

_'Can I? I want them to know, Lewis, want them to **see**…'_

The alter was a biter, but that suited Linkara just fine. If the worst should happen, he would have this, the bloody wound and the scar that would come of it.

He took his time when it was his turn, sucking slow and gentle. Branding Insano (_Spoony_) with his sign, a mark of what they were to each other.

"Go," Linkara told him when he was satisfied, "Kick his ass with science."

* * *

><p>Reversing the camera feed took Insano less than a minute.<p>

They sighed when they saw Critic. Curled up in his chair like a mantis, all long limbs and sharp angles.

Sleeping, and peacefully by the look of it, his brow smooth, his face untroubled. They took it as an insult, that he should slumber on while they paced and waited for Insano to win the day.

But sleeping was good. It meant there would be no need for battle and bloodshed. It meant a swift end to a terrible game.

Of would have, if only Insano had played by the rules.

* * *

><p>The door opened with a soft click and a swish, and still Critic slept.<p>

They looked down at him together. Just a man, stinking of sweat and with drool on his cheek.

But this man had taken a chance on Spoony. Had been the first to show him friendship, back when the world had been an unfamiliar and threatening place. Had pushed him to make something more of himself than a headline horror story.

And this man had shut Insano out, helped to stifle his mind and his talents. Had stolen his toys, had ripped them from his hands and hidden them away, a villain more cruel than the mother who haunted him still, with her soft hands and hard heart.

Not this time.

Not when the computer was so close. Calling to him, whispering of turrets and doors and **power**.

And only this man (_friend_) in his (_their_) way.

Insano raised his hand.

* * *

><p>Critic woke to laughter.<p>

To laughter, but also to screaming. A riot of hideous sound, and all from one man.

Or not. The lab coat was a ghost, fading in and out in a strobing flicker. The outstretched hand in its wire cage shook, fingers curling in as Insano and Spoony fought for control over the limb.

That Critic still drew breath was Spoony's doing. He understood that at a glance, knew this war was being fought on his behalf. Insano had meant to kill him while he slept, and Critic supposed he should have been grateful for the reprieve.

And maybe he would be later, when he was through being pissed right the fuck off.

He had waited so very long. Daydreaming of this moment, the forms treachery might take, the press of a gun muzzle at his temple. Gentle fantasies of shocking pain and sudden darkness, and instead they'd given him **this**.

Critic kicked off from his chair and floated up. Pulled his gun free with one hand and took hold of the remote with the other.

"You fail," he said, and that should have been it.

It should have been over.

But he hesitated as Insano settled into his skin and straightened. It would have been fitting, for it to be the scientist who let him rest, because Critic alone understood just what the man was capable of.

Too often in his life Spoony had woken to a stranger in his bed. Most of his guests were happy enough to flee when they saw his panic, and it had been something of a blessing that he could not remember the things SWS did to leave him sticky and sore.

But there had been one man who refused to leave. Who heard '_no_', and took it for '_more_'.

When Critic had answered the call he'd taken it for a prank at first. The garbled sounds in his ears had been barely comprehensible as speech, reminding him more of the dog he'd owned briefly in his youth and the sounds it made when the car wheels rolled over it. Low, thick.

**Wet**.

Ten seconds of confusion, and he'd known it was Spoony, though he couldn't have said how. Chick hadn't been happy when Critic bolted from their bed to make the long drive across town to the other man's apartment.

He didn't bother with knocking, just threw the unlocked door wide. The confusion then had been so much worse. Everywhere red, and the smell of warm pennies heavy in the air.

And in the middle of it Spoony.

Critic had cleaned his friend up first. Then cleaned up in general, trying hard not to think about what the bits and pieces had once been.

"Do you remember that bastard you turned into chunky soup?" Critic asked now, "I admired you for that one."

Insano shrugged, hand still raised, waiting for an opening. "He had it coming."

Critic nodded in easy agreement, but he wondered if it would have changed things. Would they have trusted Insano with this, if Critic had shared the story of that night and the blood he'd washed from Spoony's hair?

"You took it away. You took them all," Insano grumbled.

A silver cylinder pried from Spoony's slick fingers. No bigger than a pencil, and it had been hard to believe something so small could cause such devastation.

How many similar weapons had Critic confiscated over the years? Enough to fill two safes, and he'd been working on a third when the bombs fell.

"I'm sorry," Critic said, "You know I can't let you win."

Because the greatest weapon of all was within Insano's reach. A military computer, and who knew what secrets it held? It wouldn't be just Critic's own people at risk but the world, what little there was left of it.

And again he should have pressed the button, even traced its edges with his thumbs. But again he hesitated, because he **wanted** to lose, had been preparing so long for defeat that victory was unthinkable.

"I can't let you win," he told Insano, "But Spoony, if you can hear me...prove to me you're still in there.

"You want the remote? Come and get it."


	40. Chapter 40

"I'm sorry," Critic said, "You know I can't let you win."

They braced themselves for it. Looked up, and waited for the ceiling to come tumbling down.

When Critic spoke again they flinched from the shock. That they still breathed, that they lived, and it was a hard thing, to look away from the tiles above and back to the monitor

"You want the remote? Come and get it."

"Don't hesitate," Linkara whispered, a plea to Insano. Because Critic was lowering his gun, and _'now, do it **now**, end this.' _

Expect Insano wasn't Insano anymore, though he wasn't quite Spoony either. The goggles fading out while the lab coat remained, the dark hair caught at an awkward, in-between length.

The alter raised his hand. Folded it into a fist, and the blast crackled in the air. Linkara felt his heart leap, remembering how it had it felt, the electrical surge that had short circuited his control over his own body.

It missed by inches, by millimeters. Skating past Critic when he lunged to the side, and that gave the man time to push off from the wall. He spun through the air, slamming into Insano at speed and bouncing his skull off the tiles.

The wires of the gauntlet tore easily when Critic hooked his fingers through them and pulled. He threw the ruin aside, what had been so recently a powerful weapon now so much scrap.

Insano growled.

Grew fangs, and became Black Lantern. Lantern, whose bark had always been worse than his bite, who howled loudest when someone else was hurt.

A flash of claws and Critic's cheek was flayed open to show bone. Critic was heavier, had more knowledge of how men fight with fist and knee, but Lantern meant to go for the throat. Meant to rend and tear and **kill**.

"Don't hesitate," LInkara said, shouting it while Film Brain sobbed behind him, "Please, please..."

He was on his feet. They all were, swaying with the punches, breathing quick and shallow as if the fight were their own.

They swayed together, and they sagged together when Critic scored a lucky blow to the temple that sent Lantern staggering back. Gasped together when The Bum summoned up a handful of oil and threw it into Critic's eyes. Cheered together when SWS tackled the man, pinned him flat and helpless on his back.

"Be a good boy now." It was SWS's husky voice, but Insano's laugh. "Playtime is over."

Critic laughed along with him. Gurgling through it, the blood from his cheek flooding his mouth. "Sorry," he said, and he sounded it despite his red smeared grin, "Not quite."

And he rose.

High and fast, without strain despite the weight atop his chest. When he'd never able to lift another's weight before, had faltered and fallen every time he'd tried.

They hit the ceiling hard, a brutal impact that caught SWS across the shoulders. Tumbled down still entwined, rolling apart when they hit the floor to lay splayed out.

"Please," Linkara mumbled still, a mantra, a prayer. But there was blood on the ceiling, a streak of crimson that made him think of Baugh, of Mickey. Of stains, and how they never quite washed clean.

Slowly, slowly, Critic stood.

And they sighed together, when SWS didn't.

* * *

><p>By the time he tried to rise, moaning and clenching at his head, SWS had become Spoony. His hand came away bloody when he touched it to the back of his skull, and Critic took pity then, hauling the man back so he could lean against the wall.<p>

"You did good," he said, because Spoony deserved to know it, "You did damn good."

He took his time with aiming his gun, not wanting to make this man, his friend, suffer.

Spoony's lips moved. A breathless whisper, his voice stolen by shock and pain. It could have been anything, really. A name, perhaps...almost certainly.

But Critic chose instead to hear a question.

_'Why_.'

And Critic could give Spoony that. He could explain.

He was good at it.

"Not because of you. It's them. I can't trust them do this if they ever have to, so I'm going to do it for them."

Spoony swallowed hard. Gagged suddenly and spat bile, a yellow splatter.

"They'll kill you," he said.

"I hope so," Critic answered, and widened his stance to steady his hands.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

"Don't!"

Linkara fell hard against the door frame, his pulse a red tide behind his eyes, his heart pounding a wild beat after the mad dash through Molossia's halls.

"Hands down, Linkara." Critic's voice was low, almost gentle, a parent reprimanding a rowdy child. "I can pull the trigger before you can pull the energy."

Linkara did him one better. Tucked his hands behind his back, doing everything he could to look obedient.

"Don't," he said, "Please."

Fast approaching footsteps made Critic stiffen and Linkara hiss. Liz skidded to a stop at his back, knocking him in the spine with an elbow. Benzaie was close behind, his growl a rumble that shivered through Linkara's bones.

"Don't move!" Linkara told them both, and the others gathering out of sight in the hall outside the systems room. "Critic, put down the gun. You don't have to do this."

"Don't ask me not to," Critic said, and now he sounded young, whining a weary plea, his shoulders slumping with the weight of the pistol in his hands. "You don't...Linkara, it's only because I love him!"

"He's still Spoony!"

It was the wrong thing to say. The exhaustion in Critic's eyes became anger, a raw and righteous rage. "Fuck you," he rasped, "Oh, fuck you, fuck you all, don't you think I know? I've **always** known."

But then he smiled, and the anger because something else entirely, a strange cold serenity. One hand drifted up to fondle the remote on its cord, and Critic laughed when they flinched. Laughed while his eyes filled with tears, while Spoony bled at his feet.

"One chance," he told them, "One question. Did you send him?"

Spoony would have answered, but Critic hushed him absently. "Linkara?"

And Linkara looked into the eyes of the man he loved. Not cobalt now but hazel. A stranger's eyes. A stranger's face, with a flush to his cheeks like he knew how to laugh. There was light in those eyes to prove the world had not broken him, and wisdom enough to show it had tried.

A stranger Linkara had never met before but recognized.

Noah.

"He got out," Linkara said, "We didn't know."

And closed his own eyes then, waiting for it, the crack of thunder that would split his world apart. Instead Critic laughed again, low and throaty, a cloying sound of false pity.

"I knew you had it in you, Linkara," he said, "I knew you would be the one to make the tough calls. You'll do fine, when I'm gone."

A test then, and Linkara had passed by failing, by sacrificing one for many. "I'm sorry," he said to Critic, because he understood now, this weight they'd given him, this crushing, impossible weight that had flattened the man. "You are a monster, but we made you."

He could feel the power rising in his veins. Knew that Critic would fall before the echo of the gunshot had faded, and when the graves were dug it would be Linkara they looked to. Could already feel their eyes on his back, burning through, burning **out** all he had to give.

"We're all monsters," he said then, "Just do it, Critic. Press the fucking switch."

* * *

><p>"Just do it, Critic. Press the fucking switch."<p>

"I could," Critic said, "But why should **you** get off easy?"

Instead he took careful aim again. "Close your eyes," he told Spoony.

But Spoony, the bastard, refused to give him even that much.

"I don't want to die."

He wasn't begging. The words weren't even meant for Critic. They were a parting gift for Linkara, like the soft little smile curving his lips.

Linkara smiled back, and Critic felt a sudden bitter pain. His sister had smiled at him once just that way, and the memory of it weakened his knees.

"Close your eyes," he said again, gently now, and Spoony spared him a smile too before he obeyed.

"We were in on it!"

Benzaie looked shocked by his own outcry, ears pinned flat, lips peeled back to show his fangs in a grin that looked more terrified than threatening.

"We were," Liz agreed, and then the others were calling out. Pressing into the room, their cheeks pale but their eyes wide and unblinking.

"We all were," Joe said, "So either let him go, or kill us all."

It was all so brave and wonderfully **stupid** that Critic nearly pressed the button for pure spite.

Perhaps it would have been kinder if he had, before the best in them was eaten away. But he wavered, because they were so very beautiful, with their idiotic posturing, their belief in the power of goddamn love, as if love gave a fuck, as if it could save them.

"Okay," he whispered, "Okay, but it's on you then. Whatever happens next, it's all on you."

Then Chick was slipping free of the crowd. She came to him, her hands held low and empty.

"Give me the gun," she said, "It's over, brother. Time to let someone else take over."

She drew close, close enough to grip his wrist, her nails digging into tender skin and sparking a familiar, exquisite pain. The other hand she held out flat and expectant, fingers twitching in a silent command.

"We've lost so many. No one else needs to get hurt," she said.

Sage. Lee. That Other Guy.

They'd looked to Critic, and he'd failed them. But he could do better, be stronger. Could be strong enough to protect the rest without apologies.

Marzgurl. Baugh. Mickey. Snob.

At his feet Spoony groaned, but Critic no longer felt pity for him, no longer felt love. He felt only fury, remembering SWS pressed tight against his sister, and he should have been rid of the man long ago.

Ma-Ti.

_"So be who you are, Critic. Be you, and be sure."_

Critic rose from the floor, feeling his burdens fall free as gravity and his sister's hand released their hold.

"What the fuck are you...Critic, put the fucking gun down!"

Staring down the barrel of the pistol, Chick snarled. Showed anger instead of fear, and there was something to admire in that."

"It's never been me," Critic said, "All this time, it was never me.

"It's always been you."


	41. Chapter 41

Critic faced his sister with tears wiping the blood from his cheeks, and his eyes were lost. They were the eyes of a man who had woken to a nightmare, and how often had Spoony met those same eyes in the mirror, the juices of a stranger coating his lips?

"Easy, Critic," he spoke softly, in deference both to the man's shattered nerves and his own pounding head. Rose slowly, fighting trembling legs that didn't want to take his weight. "Easy. Chick didn't do anything."

Critic shook his head, a wild motion that looked like it hurt. "No, no she did...something. I'd do anything for her, I always would. But now I'd do the **wrong** things for her."

"Brother..."

"Shut up! Don't fucking talk to me. Don't **touch** me."

Spoony took another slow step forward, and now he stood between the twins. "Okay," he said, as if anything Critic claimed made sense, "We're going to figure this out. Give **me** the gun, and we'll talk."

Critic let him reach up and pry his fingers loose. Spoony passed the pistol off, not even looking round to see who had taken it from his hand, and was ready when Critic fell into his open arms.

But even expecting it the weight was too much, his own balance too shaky. They tumbled backward to the tiles, Critic scrambling for a grip on Spoony's shoulders and whispering a frantic plea in his ear.

"Don't let her touch me. That's how...don't let her..."

Spoony could have dismissed his ramblings as the paranoia of a broken mind. Would have, if Chick hadn't reached for her twin then. Not to comfort but to lay claim, ignoring his fear and the way he tried to crawl clear.

He let Lantern catch her by the wrist. Squeezed, just hard enough to make his point. "No. Back up and give the man some space."

"You can't seriously buy into any of this," Chick said, but in that sweet, little girl tone she hadn't used since Critic locked himself away from her. "He's my..."

_Twin. Brother. Lover. _

_**Mine. **_

Spoony squeezed a little tighter, until Chick cut herself off with a squeak. Looked down at the man curled against him, shivering, sobbing, smearing his blood across Spoony's chest. The same man who moments ago had aimed a gun at his head, and now looked to him for protection.

"He's crazy," Chick said, and Spoony nodded.

"Maybe. Probably. That doesn't mean he isn't **right**."

* * *

><p>It was a little like a trial.<p>

Chick at one end of the long table, Critic at the other, both wearing jury-rigged cuffs. One sitting tall, the other slumped forward, shoulders heaving with the helpless tears of an exhausted child.

But only a little like a trial, for there was no judge, no jury, no one impartial and unaffected.

"You're saying she what, mind rapes you?" Phelous asked.

"Yes. No. I don't know. She **infects** me."

But there was anguish on Critic's face when he looked at his twin, as if he would rather know himself mad than accept she could hurt him with a smile.

"It's a nervous breakdown," Chick said, "I don't need to be a doctor to know that. He needs rest, not a fucking interrogation."

They'd done their best to clean Critic up, to bandage his wounds and wipe the blood from his face. The smears that remained made him look grotesque when his face twisted into a wolf's snarl. Tom was there to push him down when he tried to stand, not gently, drawing a grunt from Critic at the pressure on his shoulders.

"Stop it." Critic hissed the words, but there was a plea buried beneath the anger. "Stop pretending."

"Calm down," Larios said, and Critic barked out a laugh.

"How can I, when she won't **let** me?"

* * *

><p>Midway between the pair, Linkara sat with Spoony at his side.<p>

Shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, and he meant never to let go. Found himself looking over again and again, constantly in awe that Spoony was there, with him. Safe and whole, if not undamaged, the lines of his brow furrowed deep with pain.

"You know what's funny?" Critic was saying, "I thought I was different. That you only twisted me up because I wanted you to. Did you ever care, even a little?"

Now Chick was the one fighting to stand, jerking against Joe's hold. "Fuck you, brother. I love you, you ungrateful little **bitch**. Yeah, I hurt you, but you **liked** it."

While Linkara looked to him, Spoony was looking between Critic and Chick. When plastic goggles tried to form he shook his head like a dog troubled by a whistle, squinting through the vapors that spiraled up and away.

"What are you thinking?" Linkara whispered, but Spoony only shrugged. His hand was clammy in Linkara's own, making him squeeze tighter in hopes of driving off shock with shared warmth.

"Look. You're all just going along with this bullshit because you want to believe Critic's okay," Chick said to them all, "But he's not okay. He hasn't been okay for a long time. Isn't that why we sent Insano in to get the remote?"

The remote that now sat in the middle of the table, that would be locked away again no matter what came of the night.

"And it's your fault," Chick went on, and this time when she tried to stand Joe let her. "You pushed and pushed, and he gave and gave. You used him, until there wasn't anything left. I **love** my brother, and I **hate** what you've done to him."

And she did hate them, a hate that made her tremble and spit. It was too fierce a thing to have woken in that moment. Hate that strong had history, had weight, but she'd hidden it well, had greeted them in the morning with a smile and eaten at their table.

What else had she been hiding?

"No," Critic said, "You're the one who used me. That's who you are. And I let you, because that's who **I** am."

His tears were drying now, leaving him looking wrung out and defeated. "Tell them. If you ever loved them, tell them."

But Chick threw up her hands, or tried to, hampered by the binding at her wrists. "Why? Why would I fuck with your head? What's the point?"

"I didn't do what you wanted," Critic said, "You wanted to bring strangers here, but we wouldn't let you. So you had me get rid of Snob and anyone else who spoke against you...I could feel it, when I forced him out. You were **happy**. I wasn't...that feeling, it wasn't **me**."

"Where's your evidence?" Chick was mocking him now, teasing him with a smirk, as a sister does a brother. "You can't prove any of it."

"I can't," Critic agreed, "Which is why we both have to leave."

Chick went silent at that. There was truth in it, for if Critic was right, Chick had spent the better part of a year picking away at her brother's soul. If he was wrong, it meant Critic himself was so broken he saw even his sister as the enemy.

How could they ever trust the pair again, when they couldn't be sure in which twin the sickness had its source?

"No," Chick said after a frozen moment, voice tight with fear. Fear of the desert, of her coyotes and sweeping winds. "You can't...he's fucked in the head. You can't listen to this, you know it's not...if I could do something like that, why haven't I messed with anyone else?"

"Reverse empathy."

Spoony spoke softly, but he didn't need to shout to get their attention. They waited for more, for an explanation, but Spoony seemed unaware he had spoken, still studying the twins with his head tilted to one side.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Lord Kat asked, and only then did Spoony take notice of their scrutiny.

He jolted a little, his hair growing thick and clumping with mud and grime, but he settled easily when Linkara pulled him closer.

"Forget them," Linkara said, "Tell me, just me."

"We know there are powers based on emotional influence. What if Chick can make him feel what she does, or just whatever she thinks he **should** feel? We always thought she never went through the Change, but maybe she did. And maybe her power only works on Critic, or only on people she's related to."

"She's always pawing at him," Film Brain offered, and Critic sighed, low and lonely.

"It gets worse when she touches me or she's close," he confirmed, but there was no relief in his voice at this tentative support, "When I was alone, in the systems room...it was like I started to wake up. And just now...I was going to drop the gun, but when she touched me...I wanted Spoony dead. I wanted to be the one to kill him."

"Oh, for..." Chick's glare was sullen, her pout twisting into something ugly. "Again, where's the fucking **proof**."

"Wait," Spoony said.

He was listening, head canted further to the side to better hear the voice within.

And then he was up and moving, the lab coat materializing to swirl around his legs when he bolted from the room.

"I've got it," Linkara told the others, and did what he did best when it came to Spoony.

He followed.

* * *

><p>It didn't take Spoony long at all to confirm his suspicions, and he was already lifting his fingers from the keyboard when Linkara barreled into the room.<p>

"Spoony?"

The name was a question, and Spoony answered it by pulling the other man close and kissing him sloppy and deep.

"Just me," he said, "Only me."

They were still there, Insano and the rest, still close. Still whispering, but Spoony could choose to listen or not, could take what he needed and leave the rest.

Linkara was shuddering now, clutching at him with greedy hands, and stealing two kisses for every one of Spoony's own. "I was so scared," he whispered, "But it's you. You're **here**."

Spoony laughed, because scared? He'd been fucking terrified. It hadn't been his past that flashed before his eyes when Critic leveled the gun at his head but his future. Role playing games and lazy nights, and Linkara. Always Linkara.

"I'm still fucking shaking," Spoony said, and he could lay claim to it now, his fear. "And I'm still so angry. And you...I **want** you. I want to bend you over this chair and fucking **take** you until you can't walk."

Linkara groaned. Savaged him with lips and tongue and teeth, and it was perfect, it was **life**.

"I want," Spoony said again, "I want, and I'm angry and scared and it's all **me**, Linkara, just me."

He growled in protest when Linkara drew back, but the other man looked at him with such pride, such love. "You're beautiful," he said, and for once Spoony did not argue.

One last kiss, and then Linkara was moving further away, motioning toward the computer with a dip of his head. Spoony took the hint, knowing this time he didn't need to be greedy.

Linkara wasn't going anywhere.

"Maybe I can't prove if Chick has power," Spoony said as he reached for the mouse, though he actually thought there might be way to try, "But I think I can prove who she **is**."

He clicked through the folders until he found the date he needed. Let Insano deal with the password, sharing a laugh at how easy it was to bypass.

The video feed was crisp and clear. Linkara sucked in a breath when he recognized the day on display.

"Can you patch that through to the mess?" was all he said when it was over.

Spoony nodded. Insano smiled.


	42. Chapter 42

"What is this?" Critic asked when Spoony and Linkara rejoined the others.

On screen Linkara was squirming. "Just watch," Spoony said.

So they did. Watched Linkara run from the systems room with the awkward scuttle of a man in urgent need. Watched Spoony sit on his hands and squirm for an entirely different reason.

Watched Chick saunter into the room. Watched her touch the nape of Spoony's neck, so casually, as if she'd never been warned.

And still Spoony kept control, as he had resisted the siren call of the computer. Enough to keep Lantern contained when surely Chick had earned a scratch, a bite, if only to remind her not to take such liberties.

She hiked herself to sit on the console, but they saw how it took her three tries to 'accidentally' activate the alarm. No accident after all, but an act of calculated cruelty.

They watched her smile, when Spoony fell.

And then she waited until he was screaming, a tortured thing writhing at her feet. Pulled a single pill from her pocket, and wasn't that odd? No bottle, just a pill, and it was almost as if she'd known it would be needed.

She leaned in close, and most of what she whispered went unheard. But the words that floated free were filthy, suggestions and promises that made even Joe flush bright. When SWS rose grunting and wrecked she greeted him with open arms, matched him thrust for thrust until approaching footsteps ended the game.

Spoony turned off the recording then. Film Brain's cheeks had gone a rather alarming shade of crimson, but Spoony himself felt no embarrassment. He wasn't the one who'd been exposed on that screen.

"She didn't say no," he told them all, because now he **could**.

He'd trusted once that there were lines he would not cross. Chick had stolen that faith, and shame had grown in its place. Cancerous shame, with black tendrils that spread and choked and tangled. Cleansed, vindicated, he could lift his chin, could look the others in the eye.

"She didn't say no," he said again, and waited for each in turn to nod.

But he waved them off when they would have apologized. It was enough for now to be right without making them wrong, enough to be absolved of guilt without inflicting it in return. He wasn't ready to face what it meant, the way they had believed the worst of him so easily.

"How?" Chick asked when he looked at last to her.

"Think about it...did you really believe the only cameras were outside?" But of course they had, and so had Spoony, fucking idiots that they were, and thank God Critic had assumed the same or he'd have killed them all long ago. "A place like this, with so much security? **Of course** there are cameras."

The others looked up, shoulders hunched, but Spoony had little sympathy for their sudden paranoia. Not when he had lived all his life under watchful eyes, every idle twitch monitored and made meaningful.

"There," he said, pointing, "And there. I suppose some of them must be actual sprinklers, or we're going to be fucked if there's a fire."

"I'm sorry," Chick mumbled, "I just...I needed to help my brother. I had to show him the threat was real."

"Bullshit."

Benzaie had never looked less cuddly, a mass of hulking muscle and **teeth**.

"You laughed."

He swung his head to look at Spoony, and just like that he was Benzaie again, soft and white and cuddly. "**I'm **sorry," he said, "I should have known better."

But Spoony knew Chick's ploy had worked so well only because the suspicion must have been there.

"I forgive you," Spoony told the bear, though maybe he didn't. Not deep down, where it counted.

"There, then." Chick had found her smile again, but her teeth were no longer the gleaming perfection they'd been in the days of dentists and bleach. "No harm done. I was just trying to do the right thing for everyone."

"The right thing for **you**," Critic said, "You lied to me. You lied to my face, like I was anyone else, like I wasn't **yours**."

"You couldn't do it on your own. You just...you needed a push. That's what makes us such a good team, brother."

Critic laughed, and he sounded so very, very sad. "Don't you fucking dare, **sister**. Don't blame this on me. This isn't like when you made me fire Goggles. You framed him. You **raped** him. He was never a danger until you made him into one."

Linkara made a soft sound of confusion at the unfamiliar name. It had been before his time at Channel Awesome, but Spoony remembered her, her smile and habit of air hugging him when he couldn't tolerate the real thing. Remembered helping her clear out her desk, both of them baffled at her dismissal when her ratings had been solid despite her spotty release schedule.

"So I fucked around with Spoony." Chick shrugged, dismissing so easily those weeks pacing his cage and waiting for Linkara to make time for him. That doesn't mean I did anything else. You took care of Snob on your own."

"With your hand on my back," Critic said, "With you **pushing** me."

"I can test it," Spoony broke in, now that Insano had thought of a way, "It wouldn't even be that hard. There's probably a change in brain activity with proximity."

Chick blinked at that. Went very still, and Spoony could see the instant she decided there was nothing left to lose.

"We could have had everything," she hissed, "But just enough was always enough for you, Critic. There are people out there, and they would have given us **anything** for a piece of this."

Chick gestured at the white walls as best she could. At Molossia, haven and home. "But you couldn't do it, could you?" she asked, plaintive now instead of accusing, "Couldn't get rid of the ones who were a threat to your power, and you were too much of a pussy to take a little risk. I gave you ambition and anger, but it all just turned to fear. You're weak, brother mine, and nothing I tried made you strong."

"I'm weak," Critic agreed, "And you like me that way. You made me that way."

Chick giggled.

"You let me."

"I did," he said, "Because I love you. I always will.

"But I'm not going to be your bitch anymore."

* * *

><p>Was it exile, if Chick chose it?<p>

The alternative would have been a cell and Insano. Possible surgery, if that's what it took to shut down her power, and a life with people who knew her games.

Now she stood facing them with the desert at her back, and it was easy to imagine Snob in her place. Hard, to feel empathy or sorrow with that image in their minds.

"I could have made you great," she told them, and if she felt regret she hid it well.

She dismissed them then. Turned to Critic and snapped her fingers.

"Come with me," she said, and it wasn't a question.

Critic cringed. Like a dog, a beaten down, used up cur, and if Linkara hadn't believed Spoony's theory already he would have then. Whatever the man felt was too much, too big, emotion amplified and reflected until he crumbled from the strain of it.

"Leave him alone, Chick," he ordered, and somehow that was enough to make Critic hesitate before he could scamper to his sister's side.

"Stay," Critic begged, "You could stay. With me."

Chick smiled at him, slow and sweet, and there was sorrow there. Linkara could believe that she loved him, but if so it was a greedy, grasping love. Like a toddler with a puppy, a love that would suffocate long before it let go.

"I'm better than this." An echo, to that long ago day when Critic had stood before them in the bunker with his twin at his back and promised them that they were all better, worthy of so much more than mere survival. "I'll do fine."

"I know," Critic said.

"Then come with me."

But Critic looked to Linkara. So did Chick, and the hot loathing in her eyes took him by surprise.

_'Oh,'_ he thought, _'It wasn't Spoony. You wanted __**me**__.'_

Spoony had been a pawn, a sacrifice, Linkara's punishment for speaking so strongly against Chick's plan to bring strangers to Molossia. That her revenge had failed was testament only to Linkara's own cowardice, for a better man would have taken Spoony and left, would have risked the wastelands over watching his lover die by slow degrees.

"I know I don't deserve you, brother," Chick said, "I know I hurt you. But I **need** you."

Still Critic waited.

Until Linkara nodded. Gave his blessing, because he knew how it felt, to wake with empty arms. To cling so hard and tight, because a greedy, grasping love was better than no love at all.

* * *

><p>Critic felt fear, and knew it was not his own.<p>

And it terrified him, to know his sister was afraid.

It was so hard, to be sure of his emotions from her own. And he wasn't sure if it mattered, wasn't sure if there had ever been a line between what she wanted and what he needed.

_'You let me.' _

And he had, let her twist, let her pull, danced content at the end of the strings. He knew the others were confused still, that they didn't understand what Chick had meant to accomplish or how she'd meant to use Critic to gain it.

Power.

Ambiguous as that. Just power, it whatever form it took and however she could take it. Perhaps because they'd grown up with so little of it, in those days when a fully belly had meant a loathsome sacrifice. Something frail had hardened in Chick then, and when she looked at the people who passed by in their fine coats and cars it was only to consider what purpose they might serve.

All this Critic had known, had respected. Channel Awesome had been his idea, but he'd made of it a gift to her, an outlet to soothe her need for control. And though he'd regretted firing Goggles and the others, their confusion had been well worth it to keep his sister entertained and content.

But always she had led from a step behind, making use of his charisma while playing the fool. The decisions were hers, but it was on Critic to explain them, to make them sound logical and just instead of simply cruel. Because it was Critic who held their loyalty, as if somehow they sensed that behind Chick's smile lurked a desert fox, a creature of the sands who hunted for her meat.

She was a lustful thing, his sister, and with the Fall had come a chance to build an empire. New toys to break and minds to bend, but Linkara had snubbed her plans. Snob had been a threat for a different reason...he'd been Critic's friend, and he should have remembered he was not allowed those, could have protected Snob by ignoring him.

So she'd been rid of them both in time, but Critic had turned her own rage against her then. She could give him emotion but not the source of it, and the anger she'd felt at being denied had become fury at seeing his people hurt in Critic. And though he knew her so very well, Chick had never known him at all if she'd thought it would go differently.

"Come," she said again, and he went, because what else was there to do? She didn't know him, but she still **owned** him, and what else was left for him, save quick obedience and her triumphant smile?

"Come," she said, and he went, because he didn't deserve to **stay**.

He was almost at her side when Lord Kat caught his arm. Larios gripped his shoulder. Spoony took his hand. Film Brain's arms wrapped tight around his waist.

Each found a place to touch, a place to hold. Keeping him where he was, with them and not her, and Critic sobbed when he understood what they were saying, the gift they were giving.

_'Not your choice.' _

_'This one is on us.' _


	43. Chapter 43

That night and for many to come they slept in the mess.

Pulled the tables and chairs to the side, heaped the floor high with blankets and pillows.

Curled up close like they had in the bunker. A tangle, with Critic at its center, anchoring him down with their presence as much as their weight.

He tried to tell them, did his best to explain how it felt to feel. The anger, always. The way he'd been so close to letting Snob stay, and how that had changed when his sister's hand touched his back. The joy when the man was gone, and how it had sickened him, alien elation creeping in to battle his grief.

But they hushed him, knowing they could never understand, never known what he'd meant when he said he'd been afraid. How could they, when what fear they felt was entirely their own? Only Spoony could guess at it, and it made him gentle with Critic when he of all people had every cause to be cruel.

It would be a long time before they forgave the man. Longer still before they trusted him again, if that day were to ever come. Chick had given him ambition and fear and rage, but he'd been the one to make use of them.

But love him?

They'd never stopped.

So much of what he'd done they'd allowed, and so there was guilt enough to share. And what was shared was lessened, and so they could love him still, despite it all. Perhaps even a tiny bit more because of it, knowing that his sins had been born out of a desperate desire to protect them.

They could hold him while he wept, could coax him into eating a little oatmeal and wipe him down when it came right back up again (skinny, so skinny, a fucking **twig**, and why hadn't they noticed?) They could take care of him, as he'd tried for so long to take care of them.

The artificial night passed, and the lights above were glowing bright when Critic closed his eyes. He managed only an hour of sleep before he startled awake, calling out in a hoarse voice for Snob, for his sister.

He had his choice of shoulders to cry on then, and for now that was all the choice Critic needed.

* * *

><p>"Come with me."<p>

A whisper in his ear, and Linkara flinched from it, hearing Chick's voice in the words.

But it was Spoony who breathed hot against his cheek, and Linkara let himself be tugged to his feet.

They walked together down the long halls, and it felt strange, to leave the mess and the others behind. A week had passed since Chick took herself away, and Critic had only just begun to sleep through the night.

But he wasn't the only one who needed to feel connected, who needed to feel **safe**.

Linkara flinched again when the bedroom door slid shut. He knew it wasn't locked, but he opened it again just to be sure, to prove it to himself, because knowing wasn't the same as **knowing**.

A third time. A fourth, a fifth, and still he wasn't satisfied. A sixth, wondering if the stranglehold panic had on his chest would ever ease.

And then Spoony was wrenching him around, crushing their mouths together with a passion that made Linkara forget utterly about the door at his back.

There was so much he wanted to say to the man who plundered his mouth with his tongue and nipped at his lips. But it was easier, to let Spoony kiss him and to kiss back, rough and oh so needy.

Because the words had edges, the words were risky, and Linkara thought he knew a little of what it had been like for Critic, out there on the edge, battered by emotion grown punishing. He'd had his own reasons for keeping to the mess and the company of friends over the past week.

He'd been afraid.

Afraid of this moment. When it would be just him, just Spoony, and the jagged words between them.

_'I'm sorry. I knew you would never hurt us, force yourself on one of us, but I didn't __**know**__ it, not like I should have. _

_'I should have fought harder for you, for us._

_'I should have stayed. Even when I was with you, I wasn't, not so it counted. I took but I didn't give, but that's your fault too, because you shouldn't have let me.'_

But there were lighter words, easier words, and perhaps they were words enough.

"I love you."

He didn't realize he was crying until Spoony wiped the tears from his cheeks. "I love you," he said again, "I love you, whoever you are, it's **stupid** how much I love you..."

Spoony laughed at him for that. And it was Insano's laugh, and SWS's, and The Bum's, and Lantern's. It was Noah's laugh, deep and husky and beautiful, and Linkara surged forward to claim his mouth, to drink it down and lick it from his lips.

He didn't understand at first when Spoony went down to his knees. Shook his head in simple confusion when the other man reached for his zipper.

Then everything was slick, impossible heat. Linkara couldn't find the air to shout, could only arch up and let himself be swallowed down. His palms hit the wall behind him, a sharp retort that reminded him of gunshots and how close he'd come to losing this (_his_) man.

"Stop," he begged when he could remember how to speak, "Is it..."

"Me," Spoony promised, mouth still open against him, breathing cool over wet flesh. "Just me."

Linkara didn't last long after that.

Spoony tucked him away so gently it felt like worship. Linkara pulled him up and stole a bitter kiss.

"You didn't have to..."

"I know." Spoony's smile was tilted, tugged down by remembered fear, but his eyes were bright. "That's why."

But when Linkara reached out to return the favor Spoony stepped back. Left Linkara standing lonely, hands grasping empty air.

"Okay?" Linkara asked.

"No," Spoony said, "I know what I said, before, but it might...it might never be okay."

He made it an apology with the way he bit his lip and looked to the side, and Linkara felt his heart clench so sharply he gasped at the pain of it.

"Not being okay **is** okay," he said, "Come here."

He cupped him through his jeans, let Spoony work himself against the friction. Tipped his head to offer his throat, groaning low when Spoony layered new bruises over old, tongue flickering across the tender scab Insano had left behind.

After Spoony wrinkled his nose and shifted to stand with legs spread wide. "I'm going to need a shower," he complained, and Linkara laughed.

Laughed until he was sick with it, weak with it. Laughed until he cried, head heavy on Spoony's shoulder.

"I messed up," he said, "I got it wrong. You were the one who got it right, and I'm so happy you did, but it was only because I was gone..."

He knew he was babbling, but he couldn't make himself stop. It took another kiss to shut him up, and it felt like a slap, vicious and stinging.

"You got things wrong," Spoony said, "So did I. But not **that**. You fucking asshat, you moron...I figured it out because you showed me the way. You showed me I didn't have to be afraid of fear, that if I needed comfort someone would give it. That being angry didn't mean being alone...you trusted me to **feel**."

"I didn't trust you **enough**."

They both went silent then, feeling the shape of that truth. A scar, raised and reddened, but all battles leave their marks.

"I just need to know...what did I do, Linkara, that made you think I could do **that**?"

Pin down a struggling woman, ignore her pleas and shake off her punches. Such a soft question, with no anger to it, and again Spoony's eyes slipped from his own.

"No," Linkara said, leaning in to catch that hazel gaze, "**No**. It was never you, sweetheart. You've always taken such good care of me...of all of us. I'm so very sorry for not listening, for making you doubt yourself. **I** should have known better. **I** fucked up. You didn't."

So the words came easy after all, and Linkara could only hope Spoony heard and believed. Could only hope he understood that the sin had been Linkara's alone, even if it meant losing this, losing them.

Spoony sighed. Leaned in to kiss him, tender and sweet, and it tasted like _goodbye_.

"Don't..." he began, and Linkara braced himself, hearing the rest before it was spoken.

_'Don't follow. I love you, but I don't forgive you.' _

"...call me sweetheart."

* * *

><p>In the weeks after Chick left him behind, Critic found himself passed from bed to bed. Like a stray pup, fostered but not owned.<p>

But he was grateful for it, pathetically so. There was a hole in him, a hole **through** him.

"I'm sorry," he told whoever wandered close enough to listen, "I'm sorry."

As repetitive as the words became, they were never less than wholly genuine. He wallowed in his guilt because it was his own, wrung out every drop of shame with a terrible greed. There were days his apologies came out giddy, bubbling up like laughter, like sobs.

'_**I'm**__ sorry_,' he thought, '_I am. __**Me**__.'_

But slowly, slowly, he was learning to be alone. Learning to fill up the emptiness inside with pieces of himself, all the bits he'd thought he'd lost. The strength Chick had convinced him he didn't have, the compassion he'd buried to get the job done.

He was learning who he was, and who he was becoming.

* * *

><p>Linkara sought her out, found her arranging her maps in preparation for the coming game.<p>

"Liz."

She turned to face him, hands on her hips, and Linkara faltered.

Her eyes were wary, and he'd never had a woman look at him that way before. Not afraid, but watchful.

"I'm an idiot," he said.

"Pretty much," Liz agreed.

Then she had him by the shoulder, dragging him over to the table where trolls of twisted wire and golems of pebbles stood waiting.

"Roll the dice," she said, "And let's play."

* * *

><p>The game wound down in the small hours of the morning.<p>

The circus master had been defeated, the audience wowed by displays of acrobatic daring-do. Popcorn had been both eaten and thrown, a handy stand-in for magical effects.

It crunched underfoot as the players yawned and shared highlights of the battle. Spoony leaned in against Linkara, bumping him with a shoulder and claiming a quick kiss.

"Bed?" Linkara asked, but Spoony shook his head.

"I'll catch up with you later. I want to have a look at the computer."

The conversation did not dwindle, just came to a jarring full stop. Heads came up, worried eyes flitting past Spoony to settle on Linkara.

Spoony waited with the others. He could have done things differently, could have gone to Critic first or asked Linkara's permission in the privacy of their bedroom.

But he'd felt he'd earned this, and he needed the others to know the answer as badly as he needed to know it for himself.

Linkara shrugged.

"Don't wake me up when you get in," he said.


	44. Chapter 44

Spoony settled his fingers on the keyboard. Took a deep, steadying breath, and reached out to Insano.

They asked, and Molossia answered.

* * *

><p>It didn't begin there.<p>

But Molossia was where they'd tested it, the first versions of the chemical they came to call Change. Not as a weapon, but as a way to create them.

The first round of experiments had given them a man of living flame.

A man with cloven feet and unnatural agility.

A man with gills who died choking on air.

When Change was administered to a rodent, a monkey, it produced predictable results. A desert fox would always grow dual heads, a coyote would always sprout tentacles along its spine. The scientists had expected it would be the same with their 'volunteers,' and so quickly learned the first rule of Change when applied to Homo sapiens.

Change was random.

Round two gave them armored skin, wings, a razor smile.

The scientists kept spinning their roulette wheel of monstrosities, searching for a way to stabilize the compound. A way to manipulate Change, direct and control it, and so build a more lethal solider.

They were kind, at least, when it came time to delve deeper into the mysteries they had created. At night the doors to the dormitory were sealed, the vents opened. Death came creeping, and the recruits in their beds breathed deep and slid gently into sleep.

Round three.

Round four.

They covered the faces of the dead before they picked up their scalpels. Made guesses to the functions of unfamiliar organs, traced the pathways of new nerves. And when they had learned all there was to know, they burned what little was left, and later raised a toast in honor of their victims.

Round five.

Had Baugh known, back when he'd been a lowly guard? Had he taken his turn to push the button, to write letters praising the bravery of murdered men? Had practice made it easier when it came time to sacrifice his fellow officers to save his family?

The first report came from Israel. A soldier with laser beam eyes, another with eye-blink speed. Within a week more were flooding in. An insurgent who could kill with a touch in Pakistan, a man who could heal in Darfur, a girl with fur and horns in England.

The secret had been stolen, and Change was loose upon the world.

But where the United States had delayed and dissected, looking for perfection, for **control**, her enemies embraced the capricious nature of the drug. Built armies from misfits, and the generals in their bunkers were afraid.

The United States launched the first missiles, old-fashioned destruction raining down in warning.

What they got in return was Change and a blood red horizon.

What better way to destroy a country then to give her own people the power to destroy each other? The bombs crisscrossed the globe, the players in the drama competing for the final word.

Insano bypassed the security measures that called for a thumbprint and retina scan, but it was Spoony who pressed the button.

He sealed the vents and opened the doors.

All of them.

The doors that led down to the dormitories buried deep beneath the earth. The dorms that had been meant for the first wave of mutated soldiers, five hundred beds in neat rows, the sheets still tight at the corners.

The doors that led to the laboratories where Change had been studied, where someday might be found the secret to reversing it.

It didn't begin in Molossia.

But something would.


	45. Chapter 45

She might have been beautiful once but the desert had taken that from her, leeching the red from her hair and turning it a brittle dun. Open ulcers marked her cheeks, white strands of flesh drooled from forehead and nose.

She wound her fingers through the links of the fence to tug and rattle, but the man at her feet lacked the energy even for that. He watched with the dull apathy of true exhaustion, head leaning in against her leg.

Once Critic would have turned the pair away. Once he would have killed them where they stood and said nothing to the others of what he'd done.

Now he reached out to turn on the monitor above Molossia's door. They waited together, crowded in close to see what these strangers might say.

And the woman gestured to the man, and said the only thing she could.

"Please."

And one by one, they looked to Critic.

Because even now, even after everything, old habits die hard.

* * *

><p>The woman, Lupa, carried a wolf beneath her skin, amber eyed and dark furred.<p>

The man, Todd, was a mimic, the very creature Critic had used as a boogeyman to frighten them into compliance. His face any face but his own, stolen features to hide the scars, the ruin created by a raider with acid touch.

They were a challenge, and Spoony reveled in it.

The pair was escorted down to the dorms, given food and care, then locked away. For a week and a day Spoony rarely left the lab, would have slept there if Linkara hadn't sought him out and given him good reason to return to their bed.

The long hours in front of computers and beakers settled in his back as a heavy, dull ache. Migraines blossomed, shattering his thoughts again and again at the cusp of epiphany.

Spoony had never had so much fun.

He'd loved making reviews, had managed an anxious happiness while in the company of friends, but this was a simpler joy. One he'd denied himself, the excitement of discovery, the thrill of curiosity satisfied.

He'd learned as much as he could of Change already. Four innocent little vials with baby blue stoppers, the liquid inside tepid beige. It would be years yet before he might come close to undoing what had been done, but what could not yet be mastered could be leashed.

The data was safely stored away, but still Spoony had hesitated before he asked Linkara to burn the vials to ash.

There were some temptations no man should be expected to resist.

Linkara had been the first test subject, his energy blasts reduced to a harmless green fizzle by rude bracers of steel. Insano had preened at his own success, but Spoony had only wanted to know if he **could**. Linkara wore them still, and proudly, markers of a choice he'd chosen not to make.

For Joe it had taken surgery, an implant to boost the signals of a deadened nervous system. His first taste of chicken loaf had been a revelation, but his grin had never faltered even as he complained it tasted twice as bad coming up as going down.

Not everyone was so eager to be rid of their abilities. Critic found thin comfort in emptiness beneath his feet. Lord Kat and Tom could not remember how it felt, to be ordinary and weak. Larios' control over radio waves did him no harm, Jew Wario was most comfortable than when he was unseen, and Film Brain had no desire to be vulnerable.

As for Spoony...

Once he would have given much to trim away his excess, those pieces of himself he called by another's name. But that had been before he understood that lust had its perks, fear its uses. He owned them now, as Critic owned his guilt, and becoming SWS or The Bum didn't make him any less **Noah**.

But there were also those who longed to be once again normal, but whose powers were more complex. For them, it was only a matter of time. Someday Paw would speak, Phelous would have a less lethal handshake, and Benzaie would walk on two legs instead of four paws.

There was no pride in Spoony's certainty that he could accomplish such miracles of science. For the first time in his life, he knew what he was capable of.

Now he held Lupa and Todd's freedom in his hands.

Lupa lifted her chin so Spoony could fasten the collar at her throat. Todd was less sure, ducking his head to hide his true face and trembling when Spoony pulled the silver band tight around his forehead.

"If you change you'll get a hell of a jolt," he warned them both, "It won't kill you, but you won't get up for awhile."

He stepped back so Critic could step forward. This was the first time they'd welcomed newcomers since Liz came knocking at their door, but already it had the feel of a ceremony.

Critic recited the rules. No guns, no powers, an escort at all times. Not forever, for if they proved themselves the day would come when the rest would vote, and they would take their place as citizens of Molossia.

The pair nodded along, staring up with both fear and gratitude shining in their eyes. But when Critic was done with the speech he floated down, smiling at them so shyly they smiled back on reflex.

"Hello," he said, "We're awfully glad you came."

* * *

><p>Even after a week Lupa and Todd ate with their arms curled round their plates, still wide-eyed at abundance. Between spoonfuls of stew they smiled at each, at Critic and the rest, stupid grins that stretched their cheeks.<p>

Todd was still shy, his face a flesh waxwork of crags and shadowed hollows. He kept his head bowed when he could, but they could have told him they'd seen worse, had witnessed a friend burned to red meat and ash.

"You came from the city?" Critic asked when their bowls had been scraped clean.

He already knew the answer, to this question at least, but the time had come for the pair to share their story with the others. To their credit they pretended no confusion, only began at the beginning. Taking it in turns to share a familiar and tiresome tale of life and death among the ruins.

"I still feel like I'm dreaming," Lupa said, "You don't know what it means, to find out Molossia is **real**..."

But she laughed at her own words, because of course they knew. They'd walked the same path, crossed over each other's footprints through time to arrive at this place of shining white.

"There were others," Todd told them, "There was a raid, and we got separated. If they make it here..."

"They'll be welcome." Critic spoke gently, imagining too easily the gunfire, the screams, the horror of leaving friends behind.

He'd known already that these two would be the first of many. They were ready now, to follow through on the promise Critic had made to himself and his friends so very long ago. Ready to be better.

And Critic laughed, full throated and sudden, because it never would have been possible without Chick. Her manipulations had set Spoony on the path to healing, had given them an Insano willing to create as well as destroy.

Now there lasers embedded in the canyon walls, thumbprint locks on their guns, bands at Lupa's throat and Todd's forehead to neuter their gifts and render them safe.

How his twin would have hated it if she'd known!

"Eat," Film Brain said at Critic's shoulder, and his voice was firm.

Critic sighed but focused on his stew, grinding his teeth against rehydrated beef. Across the table Lupa eyed him as if she worried for his sanity, but Critic made no attempt to hide the tears tickling the corners of his eyes.

After laugher came tears, for Critic missed his sister.

There were still days when he was sick with want, when he lay shaking, stricken by a chill that would not fade, longing for her warmth at his back.

"Eat," Film Brain said again, and Critic was quick to lift his spoon when the other man glared.

A little piece of silence, awkward and strained, before Lupa cleared her throat. "We really can't thank you enough. I was so sure...everyone else thought I'd lost it, but I knew you would let us in. It's silly, but I felt like I knew you already."

"We really are happy to have you," Critic said. Strangers at that table, filling in the empty chairs, and that was as it should be. "Trust me, it gets boring hanging out with these fuckers all day. You'll see."

That earned him a swat from Joe. He sat to Critic's left, Film Brain to his right.

The chair at the head of the table stood empty, and that too was as it should be.

"Hold up..." Phelous said, "What do you mean, you **knew** us already?"

It had passed Critic by, the strangeness of those words. Not a hunch that the mythical Molossia existed, but a belief that those who ruled her would be kind.

"Your show," Lupa answered, "We would sit and listen, and I guess...I thought...you made us laugh, and I thought you couldn't be dangerous if you made us laugh."

She scowled at them then, trying to look accusing while still grateful for her fully belly. "The nights got a lot longer when you stopped."

Had they mentioned Molossia in the broadcasts? Critic supposed they must have, probably when they were new to the place and giddy for it.

She turned then to rummage through her pack, and though Chick knew it had been searched and scanned he felt a shiver of unease. Still, he caught on reflex the bundle she tossed to him.

"A present," she said.

"Just don't blame me," Todd added, "It was all her idea."

Critic stared dumbly down. No weapon, just a flat box with no weight to it. Bright with primary colors, so garish and unfamiliar now, and for a moment Critic could make no sense of it.

"Oh," he said, when he understood, "Oh, you **bitch**."

A cartoon bat, a fairy girl, and for the first since his sister's departure Critic laughed without also weeping. He held up DVD case up high so the others might admire his prize

"That's one upside to the end of times," Spoony said with a smirk "No more shitty direct-to-video sequels."

"We thought maybe you just ran out of things to review," Lupa said.

But her smile faltered when she saw their faces, the way they each looked to Critic and then away.

They'd talked about many things over the past weeks, but never this. The way Critic had so callously stripped them of their past, and that he had been proven justified by Lupa and Todd's arrival did not lessen the hurt.

"It wasn't safe," Linkara explained, "If Larios here can mess with radio waves, it makes sense to assume someone else could track them."

The tension eased, and one by one the others nodded. Even now, with all their security measures, they saw the risk to it. It was one thing to take in those who stumbled across Molossia on their own, quite another to invite discovery.

Oh, yeah...I guess it does make sense. I'm sorry."

_'The nights got a lot longer when you stopped.'_

"You know what?" Critic said, "Fuck it. I'm **tired** of making sense. I say we start broadcasting again. I was wrong. People were listening, and it **mattered**."

But he gestured them back into silence when they roared their approval, and saw their joy turn to worry at what he might say next.

"There's just one thing we need to do first."

* * *

><p>The voices were different, but the message was always the same.<p>

It crackled out from radios across the wastes, and those who listened built up a legend from the words.

They whispered of him, the man in black who wandered the desert. They said that he was old, that he was young, that he took what he wanted, that he shared his water with strangers. The voices that called to him were the ghosts of the innocents he had murdered, or the family he had left behind to help those in greater need.

_'Snob' _

_'We miss you.' _

_'Come home.'_


	46. Chapter 46

"No, no, no. The other set...you'd have to be blind not to see the difference."

Insano stabbed a finger in the general direction of the counter, but the gesture did little to clear up Linkara's confusion. He could have been have pointing to any of a dozen test tube racks, too focused on his microscope to bother with precision.

Were those glass tubes there just a touch thicker than the rest? Linkara took a chance and handed them over, setting them well clear of the table's edge so the alter wouldn't knock them over if he got to flailing.

He got a grunt instead of an insult, and assumed that meant he'd chosen wisely. Insano overfilled the vials with something viscous, a blue syrup that ran slow across the table and soaked the sleeves of his lab coat.

It was still something Linkara still struggled with, how science could be sloppy and rough instead of meticulous and measured. The lab had been pristine when they found it, stainless steel shining bright under the lights. A place for everything and everything it in its place, Isoflurane and potassium sharing a cart with dissection kits and plastic gowns.

Now the counters were buried beneath a snowfall of paper. There were stains and strange odors and the occasional mysterious squeaking that Linkara prayed was only a stray desert mouse.

At Insano at the center of it all, twitching from one project to the next, finding a new question for every one answered. Exquisite in his distraction, hands fluttering, singing his own praises when something came clear.

"Now the reagent. The purple...you fool, the **other** purple one!"

Exquisite, but that didn't mean Linkara wouldn't choke him to death in pure self-defense.

"Play nice," he warned, holding the container of goo just out of reach until Insano looked up with a scowl.

They stared each other down until the alter dropped his head and shuffled his feet, mumbling something that might have been an apology.

And then the lab coat and goggles blurred out and The Bum was bolting forward. Linkara fumbled the vial, only just managing to set it safely off the side before he was caught up in a crushing embrace.

"Oh, hey, hey...it's alright. I'm not mad."

He really wasn't. Insano could get tiresome, but Linkara couldn't take his insults too seriously. There was frustration under the irritation, the disappointment of a man who finds himself without peers.

A few pats on the back, and Spoony shook off The Bum with a sigh.

"You can't stop thinking about him either," Linkara guessed, because it had been a long time since Spoony needed The Bum as an excuse to take comfort in his arms.

"Do you think he is? Out there, I mean?"

It had been their turn to send out the broadcast earlier that evening, and they took it in turns because it was hard, to think of Snob alive and alone. To think that they were shouting into the ether, that Snob was long dead and devoured by twin-headed foxes and scavenger birds.

"He is," Linkara growled, made fierce by the need to believe it. "I know he is."

Spoony sighed again in answer, not agreeing, just granting him his childish hopes. Linkara was still grateful for it, nuzzling in to kiss where the goggles had pressed in and left red lines at Spoony's temples.

"Come to bed?" he asked, and his gratitude grew when Spoony let himself be taken by the hand and led from the lab with only one last wistful glance back at his test tubes.

Stripped down to his boxers, Spoony's strong hands kneading the tension from his back, Linkara found it harder to hold onto his faith. Surely the world was not so kind as to allow him this and yet spare Snob as well.

He must have dozed, slipped down into some half-state where his dreams felt like dreams, distant and slow moving. It was a kiss against his shoulder that woke him, and a soft question that he answered with a hum.

"Okay?"

_'Always.' _

Then Spoony's weight was pressing him down as he rocked his hips in lazy thrusts against the swell of Linkara's ass. His hands covered Linkara's own, twining their fingers together, kissing the nape of his neck with each thrust.

Linkara smiled against his pillow, nestled down and closed his eyes. He'd get his turn when Spoony was finished, and if not then, later. The when didn't matter, because that was the trick of love, the trick they'd taken so long to stumble across.

At the end of the day, they took care of each other.


	47. Chapter 47

He led them through the canyon like an army, though they numbered only a dozen. In lock step, desert tempered, these warriors, stooped under the weight of their packs and guns. A few carried children, solemn little gnomes with reflections of dust in their eyes.

Inside Molossia the alarm began to wail. They were too many now to gather in the systems room, instead making their way to the mess and jostling for space in front of the monitor.

"It's him," said those who had been there for the beginning, a breathless whisper tight with joy and awe, "He's here."

But those who were newer to this place shook their heads in confusion and trembled with fear. This man who faced the camera with cold eyes meant nothing to them. He was only a threat, as each of them had been a threat on arrival, when they had been desperate for sanctuary and willing to fight to take it had it not been freely offered.

But they had come alone to Molossia, alone or in groups of two or three. Not en mass, not with assault rifles and untold power between them.

"Kill them," said these newcomers, "Kill them, before they kill us."

And perhaps it would have been wise to listen, to activate the laser grid, cave in the canyon walls.

Everyone cut, cuts back. And this man who had once been a friend had earned the right to cut back bloody and deep.

* * *

><p>Behind Critic the door closed with a muffled click. Already his skin prickled with heat and sweat slicked his brow, dripping down the thirsty earth.<p>

He met them at the gate in the fence, a gawky man with a ruined face. Critic held his head high despite the scars, knowing he was wiser for them.

Snob was thinner than Critic remembered, worn to a cutting edge. "We're not leaving," he said before Critic could speak, "You called, and I came. We're not fucking leaving."

"No," Critic said, and "Hello."

That was what he most wanted to say, because it was a miracle that he could. A miracle that this man he'd tried to murder had returned to them sunburned but whole.

"Fuck you," Snob hissed, "You wanna what, shake my hand?"

Behind Snob his people stood ready, watching them both with measuring eyes. A slip of a girl at the front leaned forward to whisper in his ear, and Snob shrugged with a grimace.

"Wait," he told her and the others, and Critic felt such love for him then.

Snob was giving him a chance.

He went with it, dropping down to kneel there in the dust. "**Don't** leave," he said, "Please don't."

They stirred, Snob's warriors, glanced at each other with unease. They'd come prepared for a fight, and it seemed cruel in a way to deprive them of it.

Snob prodded Critic's shoulder with the butt of his gun, making him sway before he caught his balance. "Where are the others?" he asked, "What have you done to them, you bastard?"

"Inside. Safe. It wasn't..."

_'Me'_

Expect that would have been a lie, or close enough to one to make little difference.

"Spoony?" Critic called.

Somewhere above and behind him came static, and Critic twisted enough to smile up at them, Spoony and Linkara and the rest. This might well be the last time he saw them, and he knew they would be better off for it.

"It's all good, Snob," Joe called, then grunted when Paw shouldered him aside.

"Shaking free from crippling weight," he sang, and Snob threw up his hands in something like despair.

"That's helpful, thank you," he said.

But he whirled on Critic when he opened his mouth to explain. "Not you. Shut your fucking mouth."

Critic did as he was told. Bowed his head and waited, and the searing touch of hot metal against his temple was easier to bear than Snob's disgust.

"Put down the gun, Snob," Linkara said, "All of you, put down your guns...there's no need for it. You're welcome here."

Critic closed his eyes, wanting to make it easier for Snob if he did decide to pull the trigger. _'Kill me,'_ he thought, leaning in against the rifle's muzzle, '_But please, please __**trust**__ me. Trust Linkara.' _

Because if Snob tried to take Molossia by force, Insano would have no choice but to cut his people down. Better for Critic alone to die, a sacrifice to show Snob there was nothing left to fear.

_'Kill me,_' he thought, _'Then stand down.' _

But it surprised Critic, to find that like Spoony he had no desire to die. After months of repetition, Snob had listened. He'd come home, and that meant they could get back to the business of reviewing painfully trite cartoon sequels. It seemed such a shame that Lupa's gift might go to waste.

"Why are you smiling?" Snob demanded, "Why the **fuck** are you smiling?"

Critic knew he must have looked the madman, on his knees and grinning down at the cracked earth. "I was thinking about Ferngully," he answered honestly, "Do you remember that? It was one of my favorite reviews. Chick **loathed** that stupid movie."

"Highlander."

Spoony's voice still came from above Critic's head, but now it was close, much too close.

He opened his eyes and there they were, all of, them, their hands open and empty, disobeying his orders to stay inside and **safe**.

They faced each other, Snob's people and his own, and Critic closed his eyes again, so afraid of what might come next.

"Highlander," Spoony said again, "Any of them."

"Warrior, or The Ultimates. Kind of a toss up. Maybe All Stars," Linkara said.

His friends. Taking a stand on his behalf, and Critic had done nothing to deserve it.

"Equilibrium. Not then, you know, but now...I was right," Film Brain put in, "The thing had issues."

And slowly Critic stood. Turned and went to them, let the circle close around him, because it didn't matter if he deserved it. It mattered only that they loved him, and this was another choice that was not his to make.

Surely there had never been a battle like this, waged not with guns or raw power but memories. And Snob listened, laughed along when Joe ranted himself red at the thought of Fable 3.

"Caligula was mine," he said somewhere between Phelous and Larios' offerings, and it was then that Critic knew they'd won.

* * *

><p>Later, the two groups mingled at the edges while Critic walked with Snob.<p>

He told the other man of the dorms down below, with their reinforced walls and the beds that were slowly being filled. Of Lupa and Todd, who had been the first, and of the ones who had come after. Of Spoony and Insano. Of Noah.

"We'll have to do the same for your people," he said, pointing out Linkara's cuffs, Lupa's collar, Joe's scar. "Just until we know them. It isn't...it's not that we don't trust you."

Snob looked over his tattered army, at their worn faces and faded clothes, and nodded.

"I think we can deal. It's been a rough time."

"Who are they?" Critic asked.

And Snob told him in return of his journey. Of the wastes, and the woman he'd found naked with knife in hand, beaten but unbroken. Of the tribe that had taken them in and given what little they had.

"I guess we kept paying it forward," he said, and they shared a groan at the memory of a movie with a sweet-faced boy and a mawkish, predictable twist.

Snob's smile faltered too quickly, and he turned to face Critic then, gesturing to the crowd milling about in the canyon below.

"What's changed?" he asked.

And this was the hard part of the story, the part where Critic's sister had used him for her own ends.

"She loved me," he said when he finished, "It's just she wanted more. She always wanted more. It wasn't enough for her."

_'I wasn't enough.' _

Snob said nothing, only stood staring with something like pity in his eyes.

"She did love me," Critic mumbled, "She did."

It was a shock, when Snob reached out clasp his shoulder. His grip was much too tight, blunt fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, because pity didn't mean there wasn't hurt and anger buried beneath.

But "I'm sorry," Snob said, and Critic shook his head, refusing the apology because those words were his. Prized and polished, rolling easy off his tongue a hundred times a day, and it felt wrong, to have them echoed back.

"You're a fucked up little bastard and I don't forgive you, but I knew something was off. I should have...I should have done a lot of things. I should have had your back."

Critic had not known there was any anger in him until he felt the last of it slip away. It might have made a difference, if they'd known him well enough to know it wasn't all him, if they'd watched over him as he watched over them.

It might have made all the difference.

They stood together, watching Insano as he walked among the crowd, demanding demonstrations and scribbling down notes. Linkara followed close behind, smoothing down the ruffled feathers the scientist left in his wake.

The days ahead promised to be interesting. Some of the new arrivals would have powers that would be difficult or impossible to control, and some would balk at the restrictions placed upon them. There would be arguments and questions, a new pecking order established as the two groups felt each other out.

But someday, these strangers would become family, would earn the title of citizen. They would be given a vote, a job, a place. Molossia would become their home, and in return they would be asked to defend her, to stand as soldiers if there was need.

_'It's working,'_ Critic thought, _'I wish you could see this, sister mine. It's working.' _

"They're good people," Snob said.

"I know," Critic answered.

And admitted finally what Chick's manipulations had taken from him, something he had never quite forgotten but had come to deny.

"Most are."

* * *

><p><em>This is your Nostalgia Critic, signing off." <em>

_I remember it. For all of us." _


	48. Chapter 48

**(teaser trailer for sequel) **

The woman knelt.

Kissed her fingers and pressed them to the earth, the dry dust clinging when she withdrew.

The chill night was a blessing, soothing away the heat of the day and drying the tears at her cheeks.

"Susie?"

"Here, Lindsay," she answered the call, but where else would be she? Where else was there, for a mother mourning her child? Her youngest, her baby who had died with _'mommy'_ on her lips.

But she knew Lindsay understood. She was gentle when she helped Susie to her feet, rough when she turned her so she faced the camp instead of the grave. Forcing her to look at the tents and campfires, life instead of death.

They stood together, these two women who understood loss.

"Are we ready?" Susie asked.

Their tribe numbered a hundred strong now, with power enough between them to level a city. And tomorrow, tomorrow they could claim back what they were owed.

"They're ready. Are you?" Lindsay asked.

_'Mommy. Mommy, it hurts.' _

"We march at dawn," Susie said.

* * *

><p>Fools<p>

Idiot monkeys, drooling baboons incapable of grasping the simplest equations. The only real mystery was how they'd survived so long without his brilliance to guide them.

Even his other was the same, his little lesser self who thought himself clever for building a disruptor or two.

Insano held his prize up the light. He'd managed to save just one, leaving the rest to burn so Spoony wouldn't suspect what he'd done.

Desperation had given him the strength that night to reach up and push his other down. After that it had just been a matter of covering his tracks, twisting shared memories so Spoony remembered four where five had been.

Practice had made it easier, and now he could walk the halls at will while Linkara slept and Spoony dreamed. Such a relief, to be free of the man's control and his pathetic insistence that science should have a purpose, a direction beyond knowing what hadn't been known before.

Insano reached for a pipette and drew up a single, precious drop of Change.

It was time to play.


End file.
